FCC Mixing Trump's Personal and Public Interests: AEI Scholar

Public interest concerns and politics "aren’t mingling well these days" at the ostensibly independent FCC, wrote Clay Calvert, American Enterprise Institute nonresident senior fellow-technology policy studies. Calvert wrote Wednesday that President Donald Trump, in his legal campaign against CBS and 60 Minutes, "views his personal interest as concomitant with the statutory public interest." FCC Chairman Brendan Carr "might make such [a] coalescence a reality." Calvert cited the agency's investigation of Skydance Media's proposed purchase of CBS parent Paramount Global and how it expanded an investigation of 60 Minutes' 2024 campaign coverage. That means Trump's interests as a private litigant suing CBS over campaign coverage "are now deeply entangled with the investigatory and enforcement powers [of] a federal regulatory agency whose leader (Carr) ... the private litigant promoted."