JAKE TAPPER (HOST): Now President Trump suggesting earlier that media outlets that report critically on him should be punished. He tweeted today, quote, “With all fake news coming out of NBC and the networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their license? Bad for country,” exclamation point. This comes after an NBC news report that the White House and Defense Secretary Mattis call false that the president, quote, “wanted what amounted to a nearly ten-fold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.” My political panel is here with me to discuss this and much, much more. So am I overreading this? I’m going to take this seriously but not literally that he actually thinks there should be some sort of way that the media companies can be punished or their licenses can be taken away if they report critically on him. Am I being unfair?
MARY KATHERINE HAM: No, that’s what it sounded like. That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. And I suppose he's referring to broadcast licensing which is thankfully a bit of an anachronism, we can all get access to many forms of media outside of that.
TAPPER: Yeah, because we all have cable and the internet now.
HAM: But it’s not allowed at all to discriminate those licenses based on that content of the programming because of free speech and all that good stuff.
TAPPER: It’s just astounding. But it’s almost like we don’t even, if President Obama had said that about Fox News? And he certainly was harsh about Fox News but if he said something about taking away their licenses, I can’t even imagine.
KIRSTEN POWERS: Yeah, the world would explode, definitely. But look, he’s not, President Trump is not really known as a big free speech advocate, actually. He’s talked a lot about wanting to change libel laws. He doesn’t, he thinks, yeah, I do think he thinks if you say something critical about him, he should be able to sue you.
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TAPPER: He doesn’t seem to understand that the biggest purveyor of false news, fake news, is him. And it just blows my mind that he thinks, like, well they shouldn't be able to print this, but I can say and print whatever I want.
