California State Sen. Scott Wiener offered a blunt two-option verdict Wednesday night after President Trump threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of ABC and NBC because the networks declined to preempt their prime-time programming to carry his election integrity address live — saying Trump’s conduct left only two legitimate responses.
“25th Amendment or prison. You decide,” Wiener wrote on X.
Trump had delivered a prime-time address from the East Room of the White House Thursday evening focused on election security, in which he accused the Chinese government of accessing 220 million U.S. voter records and repeated long-running claims about the 2020 election’s integrity. The White House took the unusual step of formally asking all four major broadcast networks to air the speech live.
What Trump Said and What Actually Happened
NBC declined to carry the speech, airing a nature documentary about bear cubs instead. ABC also did not carry it on linear television, though both networks made it available on their streaming platforms. CBS aired most of the address in a special segment anchored with explicit fact-checking context. Fox News carried the speech in its entirety but added a disclaimer saying it had “not seen the evidence yet” to evaluate Trump’s claims about electronic voting machines.
During the speech itself, Trump criticized the networks directly. “In a rare move, NBC and ABC fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech,” Trump told viewers. “They knew what it was about, because of the fact that they don’t like the topic, because they know how corrupt our system is, and they don’t want to reveal it. They and others in the media are part of a plot.” He added, “Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses. They use our public multi-billion dollar in value airways for absolutely no money. They pay nothing.”
Trump’s claim that ABC did not air the speech was factually incorrect — ABC did not air it on its linear broadcast channel but did stream it, and CBS did air substantial portions of it with fact-checking. The Washington Times, citing network programming records, confirmed NBC was the only major broadcast network that declined to air any portion of the address on any platform.
Why the Networks Were Cautious
Networks have been deeply wary of airing Trump’s unverified election claims since Fox News paid $787 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems over its airing of false election fraud allegations in 2020. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, dismissed Trump’s central claim about China accessing voter files as misleading. “It’s pretty laughable to watch Trump try and pretend accessing the voter file is the same thing as election interference. Any statewide candidate will tell you that information is publicly available to purchase — it’s not some huge breach,” Warner wrote on X.
CBS News fact-checked Trump’s claim that “hundreds of thousands of non-citizens and dead people are listed and active on the voter rolls” as “exaggerated” in a graphic aired during its coverage, per Deadline. David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research told CBS that the voter file data Trump cited is publicly available for purchase by any candidate in any state — not a national security breach.
The Legal Reality of Trump’s Threat
Trump’s license revocation threat is legally constrained in multiple directions. The FCC issues licenses to individual local broadcast stations — not to the networks themselves — making a direct revocation of “ABC’s license” or “NBC’s license” impossible as a legal matter, per the FCC’s own guidance on broadcast regulation. License revocations under the public interest standard are extraordinarily rare — the last major revocation occurred more than four decades ago.
Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez rejected Trump’s threats directly. “The FCC doesn’t get to decide whether the news coverage of those in power is acceptable,” Gomez said. “It has neither the legal authority nor the constitutional right to pursue broadcasters for their journalism. These threats sound ominous, but they’re empty.”
Former FCC Chair Ajit Pai — a Trump appointee from the first term — stated in 2017 that “under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast.” The Communications Act specifically limits FCC authority over news content as an extension of First Amendment protections for journalistic independence, per the FCC’s own guidance.
But the FCC Is Already Acting
While the revocation threat faces steep legal barriers, FCC Chair Brendan Carr — Trump’s current appointee — has already ordered ABC’s eight owned-and-operated stations to submit to early license renewal proceedings, a process that creates legal and financial pressure even if full revocation remains unlikely. The FCC is also investigating Comcast-owned NBC over diversity policies. Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose affiliates cover roughly 40 percent of U.S. television households, confirmed its stations preempted network programming to air Trump’s speech via its National News Desk service — illustrating the real-world leverage local-level regulatory pressure can have on how programming decisions are made at affiliates.
Who Scott Wiener Is and What He Is Running For
Wiener is a California State Senator representing San Francisco and parts of San Mateo County, first elected in 2016. He is currently running for the U.S. House seat in California’s 11th Congressional District — the seat previously held by Nancy Pelosi — in the November 2026 election. He earned a law degree from Harvard and has built his legislative career around housing policy, transportation, LGBTQ rights and technology regulation, including authoring California’s SB 1047 on frontier AI safety, per his official California Senate biography.
His “25th Amendment or prison” framing echoed similar calls from Rep. Adam Smith, who called for Trump’s removal the same week citing the Strait of Hormuz toll fiasco, and Rep. Ted Lieu, who called the reports of a potential Iran ground invasion “INSANITY.” For Wiener, whose congressional campaign is built partly around a defense of democratic institutions, Trump’s threat to use federal regulatory power against news organizations that declined to air his speech provided an additional data point for the argument he plans to make to San Francisco voters in November.