President Donald Trump said on August 30, 2026, that NBC News’ “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker would be reported by him to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over two words she used to describe his record of endorsing candidates: “mixed results.”
In a lengthy Truth Social post, Trump, 80, mocked Welker and her program. Recent U.S. Senate races, by his accounting, had delivered him a 100 percent endorsement record, with U.S. House races at 98 percent; elsewhere in the same post he put his overall rate at 99 percent, and then demanded to know how anyone broadcasting on public airwaves could be permitted to say otherwise. “Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment,” he wrote. He said he hoped FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and the other commissioners would take seriously what he described as a danger to the country.
Any such penalty would collide with the agency’s own rules. The FCC’s website states that it “cannot prevent the broadcast of any particular point of view,” making “punishment” for Welker something that “would historically be a nonstarter.”
What Welker Really Said on Air
Nothing of the kind aired on Sunday’s edition of “Meet the Press.” Journalist Aaron Rupar posted on X on August 30: “Notably, Kristen Welker did not say this on today’s Meet the Press.” Viewers who sat through the full hour said the same, with one saying, “I just finished watching the entire program. The subject never came up! Kristen said nothing of the sort! Trump is deranged.”
The remark came instead during a live appearance on NBC 4 Washington ahead of Sunday’s broadcast. “He’s going to loom large over these midterms,” Welker told the NBC affiliate, noting that a slate of primary candidates had carried Trump’s endorsement and that the results had been somewhat mixed. Her next example was his latest pick: Sen. Darline Graham of South Carolina, sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, narrowly defeated Rep. Ralph Norman in her August 25 primary runoff and now faces Dr. Annie Andrews — a Trump endorsement win she brought up herself, alongside the very phrase he objected to.
“Kristen is one of the best in the business, and we stand by her,” NBC News said. Welker has moderated “Meet the Press” since September 2023, and Trump has gone after her repeatedly over the last two years, even as he has sat down with her for several interviews.
Inside the Endorsement Math
The president has won most of the Republican primaries he weighed in on this year. News accounts citing Ballotpedia credited him with roughly 313 endorsements and a 96 percent success rate as of mid-August. Plenty of those contests were never competitive, though, and a number of his choices ran unopposed. More than a dozen of his endorsees have gone down to defeat this cycle, and six Trump-endorsed contenders for House seats and governorships lost primaries earlier this month, by the count of NBC’s own election desk. Other outlets have described his recent record the same way: mixed.
Among the losses this cycle: Lisa Demuth beat Mike Lindell in Minnesota’s Republican race for governor on August 11, and challenger Charlie Hatcher ousted Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., in his August 6 reelection primary. Earlier in the year, Zach Lahn defeated Rep. Randy Feenstra in Iowa’s Republican gubernatorial primary on June 2, and Rick Jackson beat Burt Jones in Georgia’s Republican gubernatorial runoff on June 16. Trump also grumbled in his post that Graham’s victory received almost no coverage, even though national outlets and news organizations throughout South Carolina covered her runoff widely. Mike Mazzei, his pick in the Oklahoma governor’s race, drew the identical grievance from him.
Welker was not Trump’s only target Sunday. A separate message, typed entirely in capital letters, went after what he termed fake polls, said something needed to be done about them and called for the FCC to come to the rescue. The endorsement arithmetic has been nagging at him for days. Bill Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time,” had asserted on air that Trump is losing nearly all of his endorsement races, and on Friday’s episode he said the president texted him charts personally to dispute it. Maher said he had “overstated it” and that the full picture was “a little more nuanced,” then quipped: “Now, stop texting.”
Carr has since indicated that the commission might take up the polling complaint. “For instance, there’s a lot of interest right now in fake polls that are out there, and so the FCC may put guidance out soon to remind broadcasters about their obligations with respect to not airing fake polls,” he told Fox News on September 6, 2026, adding, “Particularly if they’re done to suppress people heading into the fall.” He gave no details on how the agency would define “fake polls.”
Carr’s FCC Is Already in Court
The threat lands while the FCC fights a court case of its own. ABC’s corporate parent, Disney, sued the agency on First Amendment grounds on August 18, 2026, arguing that its regulatory moves amounted to retaliation for the network’s news coverage and other content. Carr, back in April 2026, mounted an unusual challenge to ABC’s local station licenses days after Trump demanded that comedian Jimmy Kimmel be fired, and he directed the network’s eight owned stations to submit their broadcast licenses for early renewal review years ahead of schedule. Carr has insisted his inquiry into Disney’s diversity practices produced the move and that the Kimmel episode had nothing to do with it. A temporary restraining order was what ABC sought on a fast track, and U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan declined, setting a hearing for the week of October 5.
A Trump appointee, Carr has moved quickly before when the president complained about broadcasters. Trump aired a similar grievance on Truth Social, and Carr followed in March 2026 by issuing threats to broadcasters over their coverage of the Iran war. Comcast, NBC’s parent company, has faced an inquiry from Carr since February 2025 into what he called invidious forms of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) discrimination. Officials who once served at the commission, from both parties, say he is weaponizing the agency and chilling free speech.
Carr Breaks His Silence
Carr had initially declined to comment, but the chairman addressed the threat publicly for the first time on September 6, 2026, in an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Briefing.” Correspondent Peter Doocy put it to him directly: “He said he was going to report Kristen Welker to the FCC for rebuke or punishment. You are the FCC; have you received this report?” The chairman answered neither yes nor no. “Well, one thing that President Trump gets fundamentally is that broadcast TV is completely different from other forms of distribution, including cable,” he said.
“And so many broadcasters right now, they want to break the deal that they cut with the American people,” Carr told Doocy, adding: “They get billions of dollars in taxpayer-effectively-subsidized-distribution, and what they’re supposed to do in exchange is operate in the public interest, not some sort of narrow, partisan interest.” He went on: “I think President Trump is over the target, and we’re looking at a lot of actions.”
Whether any of that could reach Welker is unclear. The commission’s own guidance says it “is barred by law from trying to prevent the broadcast of any point of view,” and although anyone can file a complaint, its consumer complaint center offers no complaint category covering objections to a news report. In the posts, Trump made his clearest attempt so far to steer the agency toward acting on his behalf, despite its limited authority over news content.
Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on the commission, pushed back, writing that “the FCC has no authority to punish journalists this administration doesn’t like” and adding, “These threats to press freedom are dangerous.”
Actress Lisa Rinna sided with Welker publicly on September 1, reposting on X a message by X user Heather Delaney Reese that read: “Fascism spreads by turning our own institutions against us. It happens when a man with the full power of the presidency tells a journalist she will be ‘reported for rebuke or punishment’ because she stated a FACT he did not like, and then warns every other journalist in the country that they could be next.”
No complaint has been confirmed filed, and Carr, while promising that the commission is “looking at a lot of actions,” has not said whether one reached his desk. NBC’s answer, should one ever be lodged, would be short: Welker never claimed that most of the president’s picks lose, only that his results have been mixed — a description the network’s own election coverage backs up.