Of all the Trump administration’s sycophants, Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr may be the most try-hard — and he proved it Thursday during his comments on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Grapevine, Texas. In his fervor to tout the successes of President Donald Trump, Carr unwittingly admitted that the administration’s goal is the Orbanization of America, and that he takes pride in trying to make that happen.
Ranting about the “legacy national media” — which he also referred to as “the fake news media” — Carr claimed the president “smashed the facade,” and said, “You don’t get to decide what we say, what we think, how we’re going to vote inside the voting booth.” But because Carr is arguably the most eager-to-please attack poodle in Trump’s kennel, he couldn’t help but reveal what MAGA considers “winning.”
“Look at the results so far. PBS defunded. NPR defunded,” Carr boasted, before rattling off a few names of television journalists who no longer hold their previous high-profile jobs. Then he gave the game away: “[Stephen] Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership. And soon enough, CNN is going to have new ownership as well.”
Orbán must be flattered to have laid the template now being emulated by the U.S.
It’s obvious why Carr, a hyperpartisan culture warrior, would consider these “wins.” And his assessment matches the zero-sum Trump worldview: Somebody wins, somebody loses. Still, a more savvy player would have hidden the ball a little better. The defunding of PBS and NPR were done for nakedly political purposes (Trump’s executive order was literally called “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media”), but in crediting Trump for the upheaval at CBS and CNN, Carr blew off the flimsy facade that the changes were strictly made for business and journalistic reasons.
CBS News’ parent company Paramount was bought in 2025 by Skydance Media, a company owned by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison — a MAGA bankroller and one of the richest men in history. Skydance paid $150 million for Bari Weiss’ soft-MAGA site The Free Press, which often touts the press releases handed to it by the Trump administration as “exclusive” reporting, and installed Weiss in a newly created position as CBS News’ editor-in-chief. This, unsurprisingly, resulted in what several since-departed veteran journalists at the network characterized as overt pressure imposed on them to report from a specific political point of view.
That same company is now poised to buy CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. (The elder Ellison’s company Oracle now also owns a 15% stake in the American arm of TikTok, giving one massively wealthy Trump-supporting family control over an incredibly wide swath of U.S. media.)
So, credit to Carr for his shameless honesty — which Ellison and Weiss probably wish he had kept to himself, at least to keep up appearances. As former Republican operative Sarah Longwell, now the publisher of The Bulwark, put it on X, “the FCC Chairman himself is stating that CBS’ new ownership is ‘Trump winning.’ That should deeply embarrass and offend CBS’s leadership. When the FCC Chair brags that you’re state TV for the Trump administration, a reassessment of one’s values is in order.”
But Carr’s candor makes it clear that he sees his role as a soldier in Trump’s war on American institutions — and that the mission is to make this country’s media landscape into something more like what Hungary has under its authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Orbán, who has ruled since 2010 — and previously served as prime minister from 1998 to 2002 — consolidated power in large part by eviscerating independent media, first through sweeping regulatory enhancements and selective enforcement against “unbalanced or immoral” media coverage, then later via his ultrarich political allies simply handing over control of their outlets to an arm of the government. (Incidentally, CPAC has also hosted a Hungarian edition for the past several years, including last week, where American MAGA media propagandists were welcomed but independent journalists were barred from even entering.) Credit to Carr for his shameless honesty — which Ellison and Weiss probably wish he had kept to himself, at least to keep up appearances. For his part, Carr has either overtly threatened or obliquely hinted at punitive action against stations that air “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and “The View” — which he claims are violating archaic and seldom-enforced equal time laws. He has said broadcasters that do not put out content he deems to be sufficiently “pro-America” (read: pro-Trump) could be failing to live up to their “public service mandate.” He has even warned news outlets against airing reports he sees as depicting Trump’s war of choice on Iran in a less-than-flattering light. While FCC commissioners are political appointees, until Carr ascended to the top job, the agency had touted its political independence. The FCC’s website described itself as “An independent U.S. government agency overseen by Congress, the Commission is the federal agency responsible for implementing and enforcing America’s communications law and regulations.” Now, the FCC’s site doesn’t say “independent” anymore, and Carr told a Senate committee in December 2025, “The FCC is not an independent agency, formally speaking.” I doubt Carr would mind the comparison to Orbán’s Hungary. The FCC chair isn’t behaving like a traditional conservative or Republican — who prior to Trump’s takeover were political movements that at least paid lip service to principles opposing overbearing government regulation. But Carr’s values are not conservative, they’re MAGA — and as Trump has aptly stated, MAGA is whatever he says it is. Orbán must be flattered to have laid the template now being emulated by the U.S., but we sure know Carr is proud to be following it.
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW, often covering free speech, civil liberties and extremism. He was previously the senior opinion editor for The Daily Beast and a politics columnist for Business Insider. 
