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President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to investigate Chris Christie over a decade-old political scandal and revoke ABC News’ broadcasting license after the Disney-owned network aired an interview in which the former governor sharply criticized the president.
“Donald Trump sees himself as the person who gets to decide everything, and he doesn’t care about any separation. In fact, he absolutely rejects the idea that there should be separation between criminal investigations and the politically elected leader of the United States,” Christie said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” while discussing the FBI’s Friday morning raid of Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton’s home and office.
“I just watched Sloppy Chris Christie be interviewed” on ABC’s “This Week,” the president posted to his social media platform hours later. He accused Christie, a former Trump ally, of lying “about the dangerous and deadly closure of the George Washington Bridge in order to stay out of prison,” referring to the 2013 “Bridgegate” scandal in which several Christie aides and allies colluded to create traffic jams on the bridge to punish a local Democratic mayor. (Christie was never implicated in the scandal and has long denied any connection to the conspiracy.)
“Chris refused to take responsibility for these criminal acts,” Trump added. “For the sake of JUSTICE, perhaps we should start looking at that very serious situation again? NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW!” The president’s social-media post also mocked “This Week” host Jonathan Karl’s physical appearance and the show’s “bad ratings” in order to crack a joke about the network being “forced to pay me” $16 million to settle Trump’s defamation suit last year.
Over an hour later, Trump returned to Truth Social to attack ABC News, this time roping in NBC News to claim the networks “give me 97% BAD STORIES” and baselessly call them “AN ARM OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY.” The president then claimed that, “ACCORDING TO MANY,” both networks should “HAVE THEIR LICENSES REVOKED BY THE FCC.”
“I would be totally in favor of that because they are so biased and untruthful, an actual threat to our Democracy,” Trump added.
An hour later, he continued the threats, writing that ABC and NBC “should lose their Licenses for their unfair coverage of Republicans and/or Conservatives, but at a minimum, they should pay up BIG for having the privilege of using the most valuable airwaves anywhere at anytime!!! Crooked ‘journalism’ should not be rewarded, it should be terminated!!!”
Trump’s calls for the FCC to strip the networks of their broadcasting licenses come as the agency, under chair Brendan Carr, has reopened invtestigations into complaints of media bias against ABC, NBC and CBS. In the final days of the Biden administration, Carr’s predecessor had dismissed the probes, but Carr, a Trump loyalist, reopened them after taking office.
Christie and ABC did not immediately respond to requests for comment. NBC declined to comment.
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