Hi — Mark Jacob here, contributor at COURIER.
Most people couldn’t pick FCC Chairman Brendan Carr out of a lineup.
He doesn’t rant at rallies. He doesn’t dominate headlines. He doesn’t behave like one of Trump’s cartoonish loyalists.
But that’s what makes him dangerous.
In this piece, I look at how Carr is quietly using the power of the federal government to pressure news outlets, intimidate broadcasters, and help turn America’s media landscape into something friendlier to authoritarianism. While Trump grabs attention, Carr works the machinery behind the scenes.
Thanks for reading,
Mark Jacob
COURIER Contributor
Key figures in dictatorships often have colorful personalities and quirks.
Saparmurat Niyazov, former leader of Turkmenistan, renamed the month of January after himself. President Francisco Macías Nguema of Equatorial Guinea banned use of the word “intellectual.” Myanmar President Ne Win had a reputation for walking backwards over bridges to fend off evil spirits.
Brendan Carr, on the other hand, is a boring American bureaucrat whose fame lags far behind the amount of damage he’s causing our country.
As chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Carr is a close ally of two of the worst figures in American life: Donald Trump and Elon Musk. He’s the tip of the spear in the regime’s assault on freedom of speech.
If Carr has his way, you won’t see critical coverage of whatever wars Trump blunders into. You won’t hear late-night talk show hosts make jokes about Republicans. And your local news will become even more dominated by the super-rich friends of MAGA.
The FCC doesn’t regulate all media, but it does oversee international and interstate telecommunications, including local broadcast licenses. Carr has aggressively used this power to serve his dictatorial boss while avoiding the personal scandals that follow so many of Trump’s other fixers. He isn’t handing out custom bottles of bourbon with the FBI seal on them like Kash Patel did. He isn’t lying about ties to Jeffery Epstein like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick did. And as far as we know, he hasn’t taken a big bag of money in an FBI sting like border czar Tom Homan did.
Carr is a straight arrow aimed directly at the heart of our democracy. Among his actions:
- Blatantly threatening media outlets whose Iran war coverage displeases the regime: “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions – also known as the fake news – have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up.”
- Holding Skydance Media’s acquisition of Paramount Global hostage until CBS News – owned by Paramount – settled Trump’s flimsy lawsuit with a $16 million payment to his presidential library. (Paramount further appeased the regime by firing Stephen Colbert.)
- Harassing National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service as part of the right-wing campaign that led to their defunding.
- Threatening ABC’s local licenses in an unsuccessful effort to get Jimmy Kimmel fired over his comments on the Charlie Kirk assassination. (“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said, doing his best mafioso impression.)
- Ordering an early review of the licenses held by ABC’s eight owned and operated TV stations, supposedly over DEI concerns, but coming immediately after right-wing objections to a Kimmel joke about Melania Trump.
- Investigating “The View” after it interviewed Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. ABC responded forcefully by accusing the FCC of creating a “chilling effect” on free speech.
- Reposting Trump’s social media post calling on NBC to fire Seth Meyers.
- Trying to put more local TV stations in the hands of a right-wing company by letting Nexstar acquire Tegna with a waiver of the rule prohibiting a single TV chain from covering more than half of the country.
- Endorsing Musk’s transformation of X into what he calls a “free speech” outlet but I call a white supremacist propaganda platform.
- And in a symbolic but noteworthy move, cutting the word “independent” from the FCC’s mission statement, an action widely seen as an expression of obedience to Trump.
Such moves have made Carr more visible than the typical FCC chair. He’s even been mocked on “South Park” and “Saturday Night Live.” But Carr says, “I never had a goal, even from a young age, of politics.” His weapon is arcane regulations, not flashy rhetoric.
Carr grew up in McLean, Va., raised Catholic by a mother who was a clinical psychologist and a father who was a defense attorney and once worked for President Richard Nixon. Carr got his bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University, the same school his dad attended. But a recent Bloomberg profile noted that members of a Georgetown alumni group didn’t remember him, and a hunt through a yearbook found no photo or mention of his activities – just “a single mention of his name” in “a list of unpictured students” in the back of the book.
Carr went to law school at Catholic University of America and specialized in communications law. Eventually, he became an FCC commissioner, wrote a chapter of the infamous Project 2025 as a sort of audition for the chairmanship, and won the job under Trump.
Carr may be more of a power groupie than a culture warrior. The Bloomberg piece noted that in his youth, Carr was a fan of the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Commanders (formerly Redskins) before switching allegiances to more successful teams. An FCC colleague, former chair Ajit Pai, called him “a bandwagoner.”
Carr seems like the type of fascist functionary that Hannah Arendt was thinking of when she wrote about “the banality of evil.” He faithfully executes his boss’ orders with no regard for who gets hurt, so long as his side keeps “winning.”
At a CPAC event in March, he told the friendly crowd:
“President Trump took on the fake news media, and President Trump is winning. Look at the results so far. PBS defunded. NPR defunded. Joy Reid gone from MSNBC. Sleepy-eyed Chuck Todd gone. Jim Acosta gone. John Dickerson gone. Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership, and soon enough CNN is going to have new ownership as well… President Trump is winning.”
Carr thinks he’s winning too. And in a nation built on free speech, that makes him the devil.