President Trump Threatens NBC News' License — Which It Doesn't Have

WASHINGTON, DC — President Trump slammed NBC News as "fake" and "bad for country!" Wednesday on Twitter, suggesting he wants to "challenge their license" in light of a recent report from the network that found he had asked to increase the American nuclear arsenal tenfold.

"Fake @NBCNews made up a story that I wanted a 'tenfold' increase in our U.S. nuclear arsenal," Trump wrote in the tweet. "Pure fiction, made up to demean. NBC = CNN!"

He continued: "With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!" (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Later, at a meeting with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said, "It is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write."

Watch: Trump threatens to challenge NBC's broadcasting license

Many observers quickly pointed out that TV news and radio networks aren't licensed, so they can't be challenged in this way. Eamon Javers, a correspondent for CNBC, pointed out, however, that individual broadcast stations are licensed.

"We license only individual broadcast stations," explains the Federal Communications Commission. "We do not license TV or radio networks (such as CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox) or other organizations with which stations have relationships (such as PBS or NPR), except to the extent that those entities may also be station licensees."

Trump's suggestion that news outlets could be officially sanctioned by the government for the content of their stories, however, is an unorthodox and unusual move. Just last week, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, "The president is an incredible advocate of the First Amendment."

The First Amendment says that Congress cannot abridge "the freedom of speech, or of the press."

"At what point are we going to silence media critical of the President?" Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California said on Twitter. "When we cease to have a First Amendment and a democratic government."

The NBC News report that inflamed Trump's anger found that he had asked top national security officials to end the drawdown of the American nuclear arsenal. The report is clear that Trump's desire "amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal" — but it does not say Trump explicitly asked for a "tenfold" increase, which may be the source of Trump's objection to the story. He did not deny asking to increase the number of nuclear weapons, which would violate disarmament treaties the country has signed.

The officials were surprised by this request, which NBC News reports preceded Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's calling Trump a "moron." Trump previously decried the "moron" story as fake news, but in an interview published Tuesday by Forbes, he seemed less certain.

"I think it's fake news," he said of Tillerson's comment, "but if he did that, I guess we'll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win."

Advocates of free speech have grown increasingly concerned about the administration's rhetoric.

“They are trying to undermine the ability of people not to just have their own opinions but for reporters to point out that some of what the administration says is just not true,” Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment lawyer, said in the statement. “That sort of thing is destructive.”

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Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images