FCC Opens Enforcement Action Against The View, Calls Colbert Interview Controversy a 'Hoax'

The fluorescent lights of the Federal Communications Commission's hearing room in Washington cast a flat glow over what was supposed to be a routine Wednesday meeting. But FCC Chairman Brendan Carr had something else on his mind — the most talked-about media controversy in months, and he was clearly enjoying himself.

"I think yesterday was a perfect encapsulation of why the American people have more trust in gas station sushi than they do in the national news media," Carr told assembled reporters on Wednesday, delivering what amounted to a victory lap over the Stephen Colbert interview saga that has consumed cable news and social media for three days . "I think you guys should feel a bit ashamed for having been lied to and then run with those lies."

The story that brought Carr to this moment began Monday night, when Late Show host Stephen Colbert told his audience that CBS attorneys had blocked him from airing a pre-taped interview with James Talarico, a Democratic Texas state representative running for U.S. Senate . Colbert framed the decision as corporate capitulation to Trump administration pressure, telling his viewers "FCC you" in a direct address to Chairman Carr. The moment went viral. Cable news anchors decried censorship. Social media erupted.

But the narrative began to unravel almost immediately. CBS released a statement on Tuesday disputing Colbert's version of events, saying it had not prohibited the interview but rather "was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates" . Colbert fired back on Tuesday night's show, picking up a printed copy of the CBS statement as though it were pet waste and accusing the network's lawyers of approving every word of his original Monday script .

Carr, for his part, wasted no time labeling the entire episode a political stunt. "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," he said . "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."

The numbers suggest Carr may have a point about the fundraising motive. Talarico's campaign announced Wednesday that it had raised $2.5 million in the 24 hours following Colbert's Monday monologue — a record haul for the campaign . Talarico himself appeared to lean into the narrative on X, posting a link to the YouTube version of the interview with the message: "This is the interview Donald Trump didn't want you to see. His FCC refused to air my interview with Stephen Colbert." In fact, as both CBS and Carr have noted, the decision about the interview was made internally at CBS, not by the FCC .

The Colbert dust-up, however, is only one front in what is shaping up to be a broader FCC campaign to reassert the equal-time rule over talk shows that had long considered themselves exempt. Carr confirmed to The Guardian on Wednesday that the commission has opened a formal enforcement action against ABC's The View over an appearance Talarico made on the program earlier in February . He declined to provide details but made the stakes clear: "Every single broadcaster in this country has an obligation to be responsible for the programming that they choose to air, and they're responsible whether it complies with FCC rules or not" .

The legal foundation for Carr's push dates to January, when the FCC issued guidance warning that daytime and late-night talk shows should no longer assume automatic exemption from the equal-time rule — a provision of the Communications Act of 1934 that requires broadcasters who give airtime to political candidates to offer comparable time to their opponents . Talk shows had operated for decades under the assumption that host-conducted interviews qualified for an exemption given to news programming. Carr's new guidance said the FCC would consider whether a show's featuring of a candidate was "motivated by partisan purposes," and that a host's political donations could be a factor .

That last point carries particular weight. Colbert has hosted fundraisers for presidential candidates, and Jimmy Kimmel is headlining an event next month for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee . Neither ABC nor CBS has formally requested an exemption from the FCC, according to Carr.

Critics see something far more troubling than regulatory housekeeping. Anna Gomez, the sole Democrat remaining on the five-member commission, called the equal-time push "just one of a long pattern of this administration using the FCC to go after content it doesn't like" . She argued that the enforcement actions amount to government-backed censorship through intimidation. "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," Gomez said .

Gigi Sohn, who served as counselor to then-FCC chair Tom Wheeler during Barack Obama's administration, offered a more nuanced take. "If Stephen Colbert is going to give James Talarico 20 min to basically give a campaign speech, then CBS should provide equal opportunity," she told The Guardian . "In theory, I don't oppose what he's doing. What I worry about is that it's going to be unevenly enforced." Sohn pointed out that the equal-time rule has traditionally been complaint-driven — rival candidates must request airtime, not the FCC. "It's not for the FCC to go around sniffing around what The View did three months ago," she said. "He has a tendency to start his own investigations when nobody is complaining" .

The question of selective enforcement cuts to the heart of the debate. Conservative commentators have noted that talk shows like The View and Colbert's Late Show have functioned as de facto campaign platforms for Democratic candidates for years without regulatory consequence. From this perspective, Carr is simply applying rules that were always on the books but conveniently ignored when the political valence suited the establishment media. If a conservative host had given a Republican Senate candidate 20 minutes of uninterrupted airtime on a broadcast network, the argument goes, media critics would have demanded FCC scrutiny.

But the timing and targets raise legitimate questions about whether the rule is being applied selectively. All of Carr's enforcement actions so far have targeted shows with liberal hosts featuring Democratic candidates. No comparable actions have been taken against conservative programming. Critics have argued that Carr is using his position to pressure late-night and daytime talk show hosts into excluding Democratic candidates from their programs .

The Colbert interview itself, meanwhile, has found a massive audience despite — or perhaps because of — the controversy. Posted to YouTube rather than broadcast on CBS, the Talarico conversation has racked up nearly 5.5 million views, dwarfing the Late Show's typical television audience . Colbert, whose show ends its run in May, has shown no signs of backing down, though he said Tuesday that he doesn't "want an adversarial relationship with the network" .

Carr ended his Wednesday remarks with a parting shot at Colbert, suggesting the host's combative stance was driven by the impending end of his show. "That's got to be a difficult time for him. I get it," Carr said. "But that doesn't change the facts of what happened here" .

The broader implications extend well beyond one late-night host's feud with his employer. If the FCC successfully establishes that talk shows are not exempt from equal-time requirements, it would fundamentally reshape how broadcast television covers politics. Networks would face a stark choice: either platform candidates from all parties whenever any candidate appears, or avoid featuring candidates altogether. In a media landscape already struggling with accusations of bias from both sides, the equal-time rule's revival could paradoxically make broadcast television less relevant to political discourse, pushing candidates further toward social media and streaming platforms where FCC rules do not apply.

For now, the saga has produced at least one clear winner. James Talarico, a 31-year-old state legislator who was a relative unknown outside Texas a week ago, now has $2.5 million in fresh campaign funds and the kind of name recognition that money cannot buy. Whether that was the product of genuine censorship, savvy media manipulation, or something in between, may ultimately matter less than the fact that it worked.