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After his widely criticized appearance at his first and possibly last debate against Kamala Harris, Donald Trump called for the news channel that hosted the debate to have its “license” revoked.
Trump, still fuming just hours after Tuesday’s late-night debate, called Fox News to blame ABC News hosts and the network, and indicated he did not want to do another debate at all.
“To be honest, they are a news organization. They need a license to do this. For the way they have done this, they should revoke their license,” he said. Fox & Friends on Wednesday morning, citing moderators’ real-time fact-checking of several false claims, including conspiracy theories about immigrants stealing and eating pets and “post-birth” abortions.
“The ratio was three to one. It was a fixed deal,” he said.
Hours later, he wrote in an email about his campaign’s main fundraiser: “I love ABC News.”
“I don’t know if I want to debate again,” he said Fox & Friends. “I would be less inclined because we had a great night, we won the debate, we had a terrible, terrible network… They should be ashamed of themselves.”
He claimed he won the debate “92 to 7” and that it was “perhaps my best debate.”
Trump also hinted that he believed Harris’ answers had been faked.
“Kamala doesn’t do shows. … That’s not fair to the audience because they don’t know what they’re getting. But last night they saw what they got. They had a rigged show with someone who may have even had the answers,” he said.
“I watched her talk and I said, ‘You know, she seems awfully familiar with the questions,’ and after a while you get pretty good at that sort of thing, but when I saw how completely rigged that was, I looked at that and I said, ‘You know, you have to get out there,’ and one of the things I did was I said, ‘Let’s do this show at’ – what time is it – ‘6:30 in the morning,’ and it’s an honor to do that, but you have to go out and do the shows, you have to go out and do the media work.”
As part of his crusade against the media, Trump has repeatedly publicly threatened to revoke the broadcasting licenses of news channels that broadcast or publish critical reporting.
“Given all the fake news coming out of NBC and the networks, when is it appropriate to challenge their license? Bad for the country!” he wrote in 2018 in response to an article about his efforts to expand the country’s nuclear arsenal.
In September last year, he suggested investigating Comcast – the parent company of NBC and MSNBC – for “treasonous conduct” for reporting on Russian interference in his 2016 election campaign. A month later, he publicly questioned why CBS News should be given “free public airtime” after it aired an interview with President Joe Biden.
“MSNBC (MSDNC) uses FREE, government-sanctioned broadcast airwaves and yet is nothing more than a 24-hour assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party for the purpose of influencing the election,” he wrote the following month.
“Our so-called ‘government’ should crack down on them and make them pay for their illegal political activities. There is much more to come, stay tuned!” he added.
Trump, who called journalists “fake news” and “enemies of the people” more than 2,000 times during his presidency, also called for journalists to be thrown in jail if they do not reveal their sources and reportedly secretly considered sending federal police to investigate publishers.
In the Trump-backed Project 2025 plans for the next Republican president’s administration, the authors write that public broadcasters like PBS and NPR are designed to suppress conservative views and should be defunded. They also say a reassessment of the government’s relationship with the media is needed, which could include disbanding the White House press corps.
Trump has also filed lawsuits against The New York Times and CNN in an apparent attempt to undermine a long-standing Supreme Court precedent that limits the ability of public officials to sue for defamation.
