Why Trump and his FCC chairman’s threats against TV station licenses are ‘aggressive yet hollow’

President Trump, pictured above, can’t actually stop local stations from broadcasting shows he doesn’t like, but he can use his bully pulpit to pressure media companies into self-censorship. Leon Neal/Getty Images

President Trump keeps threatening the licenses of local TV stations, but his government has limited power to follow through on those threats.

The FCC has not denied any license renewal in decades. And any move to revoke a station license would result in lengthy, protracted legal challenges. “But the threats are the point,” as the FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, Anna M. Gomez, wrote on X this week.

In other words, Trump can’t actually stop local stations from broadcasting shows he doesn’t like, but he can use his bully pulpit to pressure media companies into submission