Brendan Carr, a top Republican and current Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner, wants to align as much with President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda as possible before taking over the agency’s lead seat.
“Step one for me is to make sure I continue to work with President Trump and his team over the coming weeks as the transition is complete,” Carr told FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo on “Mornings with Maria” Monday.
“I want to make sure that I understand, 100%, President Trump’s agenda, after all, when it comes to his administration,” he continued. “The American people voted for him and voted for his agenda.”
Last week, Trump tapped Carr for FCC chair, calling him a “warrior for free speech” and saying that Carr can end the regulatory onslaught on America’s job creators and innovators, and deliver for rural America.
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Carr, who was initially appointed to the commission in 2017 under Trump’s first term and continued working for the agency under President Biden, has been confirmed unanimously by the Senate three times.
Carr, on Monday, broke down his three top priorities for the new role, and expressed his determination to evaluate billionaire Democrat megadonor George Soros’ petition to purchase more than 200 radio stations.
No. 1 “is censorship. Americans have lived under an unprecedented surge in censorship over the last couple of years, and we have to work together to smash the censorship cartel,” Carr said.
“No. 2 is [the] media,” he expanded. “You look at Jeff Bezos. He recently did an op-ed where he said trust in media is at an all-time low. And there’s a lot the FCC can do there to make sure that broadcasters are, in fact, serving the public interest.”
Carr’s next focus rests on unleashing the same economic opportunity seen in Trump’s first administration: “He turned things around very quickly with his chairman, Ajit Pai. That’s going to require permitting reform, spectrum in the space economy. Look, right now it takes longer to move an application from one bureaucrat’s desk to another than it does to actually build a rocket ship. So we’re going to add some rocket fuel to that process and get it going.”
National and cybersecurity threats are also top of mind for Carr, as well as the business moves of Soros.
“For too long in this government, particularly over the last couple of years, your last name dictated how the government treated you,” he said. “If your last name was Soros, well, the commission bent over backwards and gave you a special, unprecedented commission-level shortcut to buy 200 radio stations. If your last name was Musk, then you lost $800 million contracts that you lawfully got.”
“Everybody now is going to get a fair shake going forward,” Carr added. “There’s a petition for [Soros] reconsideration pending at the FCC right now. And I want to take a very hard look at that.”
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Fox News’ Elizabeth Pritchett contributed to this report.
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