FCC Chairman Confirms “Enforcement Action” Underway Against ABC’s ‘The View’, Calls Stephen Colbert-James Talarico Incident A “Hoax”

Source: Deadline
Type: news-reporting
Author: Ted Johnson

Source Text

UPDATED: FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said that the agency “has an enforcement action underway” on ABC’s The View after the show featured James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, as a guest.

“We’re taking a look at it,” Carr told reporters on Wednesday, but he declined to go into specifics. Fox News reported earlier this month that The View was under investigation for potential violation of the Equal Time Rule, which requires broadcasters who feature candidates to provide airtime to rivals if requested.

ABC has not yet commented. The show also has featured Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), one of Talarico’s Democratic primary opponents, as a guest, but not

Carr’s comments follow Stephen Colbert‘s show on Monday, when the host said that CBS attorneys declined to allow an interview with Talarico to be broadcast out of concern of triggering the equal time regulation.

CBS has disputed Colbert’s account, saying that he was not prohibted from featuring Talarico but “was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates.” On his show on Tuesday, Colbert pushed back on CBS’ statement, saying that network attorneys had reviewed what he said on the previous night’s program. The interview was instead posted on YouTube, which is outside of the FCC oversight.

Talk shows had previously operated under the assumption that their interviews were exempt from the Equal Time Rule under a “bona fide” news exemption. Such things as newscasts and news event coverage have been exempt, and the FCC in the past has confirmed that talk shows also are excluded under the rule.

But the FCC under Carr last month issued guidance warning talk shows like The View, Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel Live shouldn’t assume that they are exempt when they feature political candidates. Instead, the FCC recommended that those shows consult with the agency on whether that is the case.

The Colbert incident became a major political and media story on Tuesday, raising questions of whether CBS was stifling a candidate to try to remain on the good side of the Trump administration. Carr, though, said that he was “highly entertained. I think it was one of the most fun days I’ve had in the job watching sort of the hilarity of how this story played out.”

He added, “Look, anybody that’s not suffering from a terminal case of Trump derangement syndrome could see right away yesterday the exact story arc and how it was going to play out. You had a Democrat candidate who understood the way the news media works, and he took advantage of all of your sort of prior conceptions to run a hoax, apparently, for the purpose of raising money and getting clicks, and the news media played right into it.”

Carr cited CBS’s statement that Colbert was not prohibited from broadcasting the Talarico interview. “There was no censorship here at all,” he said. He said that among the options that could have been considered was running the Talarico interview on broadcast, but not on stations in Texas, as the rules apply only to regions where a candidate is on the ballot.

Later, appearing on Fox News, Carr was asked by host Laura Ingraham when was the last time that the Equal Time Rule has been enforced. “It’s been a while,” Carr said.

Talarico’s campaign reported on Wednesday that it had raised $2.5 million since the Colbert interview, a record.

Talarico posted on X a link to the YouTube interview and the message, “This is the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see. His FCC refused to air my interview with Stephen Colbert. Trump is worried we’re about to flip Texas.” In fact, it was CBS and/or Colbert’s show that made the decision about the interview, not the FCC.

Carr also blasted news outlets for coverage of the incident, calling it a “perfect encapsulation of why the American people have more trust in gas station sushi than they do in the national news media. This was plainly an effort ginned up to get clicks and raise money, and you guys ate it up.”

In its guidance last month on the Equal Time Rule, the FCC said that in considering whether a show is exempt, they would take into account whether a talk show’s featuring of a political candidate is “motivated by partisan purposes.”

Pressed on what that meant, Carr said that a host’s political donations to candidates could be one of the factors considered. Colbert has participated in political fundraisers, including ones for Joe Biden in 2020 and 2024, and Kimmel is headlining an event next month for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Carr also said that the Equal Time Rule applies across broadcast media, radio and TV. Talk radio is dominated by voices on the right like Sean Hannity and Hugh Hewitt, who also feature political candidates as guests.

He said that TV talk shows were singled out because it “appeared that programmers were either over reading or misreading some of the case law on the equal time rule as it applies to broadcast TV.”

That said, conservative talk radio has also assumed that they do not have to offer equal time. In December, Hannity’s radio show featured Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, running in the upcoming U.S. Senate primary against Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX).

“We’ll take a look at anything that arises, at the end of the day,” Carr said.

He said that neither The View or The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has reached out to the FCC for a ruling on whether they fall under the Equal Time exemption. But the FCC guidance issued last month stated that the agency had received no evidence that “the interview portion of any late night or daytime television talk show program on air presently would qualify for the bona fide news exemption.”

Donald Trump has railed against late night TV hosts and has urged Carr, who he appointed to chair the FCC, to take action.

Anna Gomez, the sole Democrat on the commission, characterized the Colbert incident as another example of the FCC using its enforcement power to punish broadcasters for speech the Trump administration doesn’t like.

“I do think that the threats are the point, the harassment is the point, because the commission is not going to survive appeal if it actually takes action against these broadcasters, because what it is doing is a violation of the First Amendment,” she said. “So keeping everybody on their toes, forcing them to respond to agency inquiries — it’s all part of the ultimate goal of bringing these broadcasters to heel.”

She cited the FCC’s ruling in 2006 that The Tonight Show with Jay Leno fell under the exemption when the host interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger, then seeking reelection as governor of California. His Democratic challenger, Phil Angelides, sought equal time, leading to the agency’s opinion.

In 2024, after Saturday Night Live featured a cameo with Kamala Harris, just days before the election, NBC provided equal time to the Trump campaign during sports programming the next day. Still, the FCC has yet to rule on a complaint over the Harris appearance, Gomez said.

“The threat, the environment, the fear, is what this administration is looking for, because when you look at the actual application of the Equal Time Rule, it is really not that big of a deal,” Gomez said. “So let’s focus on the big picture of the pattern of what we’ve seen under this administration when we talk about these issues.”

Events Citing This Source

Event	Date	Category
FCC Equal-Time Rule The View	Jan 21-May 22, 2026	Abuse of Power

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