NBC News is defending “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker after President Donald Trump said he would report her to the FCC over her description of his 2026 primary endorsement record.
“Kristen is one of the best in the business and we stand by her,” an NBC News spokesperson said in a statement provided to USA TODAY.
In a Sunday Truth Social post, Trump accused Welker of a “purposeful inaccuracy” after she said on a local NBC affiliate that he has had “some mixed results” with primary endorsements. He said she would be “reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment.”
Trump cited recent Senate and House wins and claimed near-perfect success rates. Welker’s remarks, made in a pre-show live shot, noted that Trump would “loom large” over the midterms. She said he had “some mixed results” in primaries but had recently helped Sen. Darline Graham win a South Carolina runoff.
The FCC has limited authority in such cases. It licenses individual broadcast stations, not networks such as NBC, and its website states that broadcasters—not the government—select what they air. The First Amendment and the Communications Act bar the agency from censoring program content.
The clash is not the first between Trump and Welker. In June he walked out of a “Meet the Press” interview after she pressed him on unsubstantiated claims of election fraud in California. Welker later said they spoke afterward and he agreed to another interview.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, a Biden appointee, called the threat “dangerous,” writing that the agency “has no authority to punish journalists this administration doesn’t like” and that such threats undermine press freedom.