U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to use federal powers to hobble television network NBC, after it reported Trump asked for a dramatic increase of America’s nuclear arsenal.
In a story broadcast on television and chucked online, NBC cited three unnamed sources who claimed that Trump’s response to a slide demonstrating the shrinking number of America’s nuclear weapons since the 1960s was to propose a tenfold increase of the nation’s stockpile.
FWIW, America agreed to a number of international treaties mandating nuclear de-escalation after the Cold War, and that’s a good thing: the world’s superpowers already have enough nuclear weapons to destroy all life on Earth multiple times over.
That same July meeting has been in the news quite a bit recently: it’s the meeting which allegedly also inspired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to call Trump a “moron”.
Following NBC’s allegations, Trump took to Twitter to question whether he should wield the government’s heft to strip the network of its ability to even take to the airwaves.
Fake @NBCNews made up a story that I wanted a “tenfold” increase in our U.S. nuclear arsenal. Pure fiction, made up to demean. NBC = CNN!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2017
With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2017
Trump’s tweets mark his most dramatic stance against what he classifies as “fake news”, suggesting he’s toying with the idea of actively advocating to restrict organisations like NBC’s parent company Comcast from licensing broadcast spectrum from the Federal Communications Commission.
That would be a huge, huge ‘fuck you’ to America’s First Amendment right to free speech, but hey. The bloke is clearly incapable of accepting negative coverage, and is publicly posturing to censor reporting he disputes.
