Trump Blurted Out Openly Corrupt Plot to Censor ABC—and It Backfired

Donald Trump and his dutiful Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, have been targeting ABC’s broadcast licenses, and ABC just challenged this hard in a new filing. In an interesting move, ABC cited Trump’s own social media postings and remarks at speeches to show that he is corruptly trying to censor the network as punishment for its content and viewpoints, in violation of the First Amendment. Amusingly, in those examples, Trump blurted right out in public that he does in fact want the FCC to punish ABC precisely because of its speech. Now this has become a weapon against Trump. We talked to law professor Leah Litman, author of a good book about the Supreme Court. She explains why Trump’s public bullying should undermine his case, walks us through the legal ins-and-outs here, details why ABC might prevail, and discusses how open, explicit corruption is intrinsic to his political project. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.