“I don’t believe so,” said Pai
The Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai on Wednesday said that he does not believe that either President Donald Trump or any of his White House staff has attempted to contact the agency regarding the media coverage in wake of the president’s criticism of the major American media houses.
Pai was asked during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce that whether Trump’s attack on the media led to any attempts by the White House to communicate with the FCC, variety.com reported.
“I don’t believe so,” the website quoted Pai replying to Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), whose inference being that Trump’s staffs would try to use the FCC’s regulatory authority as leverage.
According to the report, Pai said that he has “consistently stated that I believe that First Amendment freedoms are critical,” and that if he “were ever asked by anyone in the administration to take retaliation action, I would not do so.”
Pai was later asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that whether the White has attempted to contact the agency on any pending mergers to which he replied that no one “has weighed in with me or indirectly with the staff, as far as I know, on any pending transaction.”
Blumenthal’s question was regarding a recent report in the New York Times that quoted a senior official saying White House officials had discussed how they could use the proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner as leverage over the news coverage of CNN.
Pai was appointed as the Chairman of FCC a few days after Trump administration took power. The president later nominated the Indian American for a second term.
In the March hearing, Democrats on the committee asked Pai whether he agreed with the president tweet saying “FAKE NEWS media” is the “enemy of the American people.”
Pai declined to answer the question, saying that he did not want to get into “larger political debates.”
Even after six months of his elevation as the US President, Trump’s misadventure with American media still continues. His recent encounter was over the reports about his son Donald Trump Jr’s Russian links and the president tweeted that what media is propagating about his son’s relation ties is outright “fake”.