“Trump has repeatedly re-upped the idea that broadcast licenses should be contingent on whether they are used to air content that offends him. Last November, for instance, he complained that MSNBC “uses FREE government approved airwaves” to execute “a 24 hour hit job on Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party for purposes of ELECTION INTERFERENCE.” He declared that “our so-called ‘government’ should come down hard on them and make them pay for their illegal political activity.”
That jeremiad was nonsensical in at least two ways. First, there is nothing “illegal” about MSNBC’s anti-Trump content; to the contrary, the criticism to which Trump objects is constitutionally protected speech. Second, MSNBC is a cable channel, so it does not use “government approved airwaves” to transmit its programming and therefore does not need a broadcast license to operate.”