How a Telecom Lawyer Climbed to the Top

Choice to head FCC parlayed his media acumen and caught Trump's attention

- Drew FitzGerald, Amrith Ramkumar and Maggie Severns

In mid-November, Brendan Carr flew to Palm Beach, Fla., to clinch his dream job.

The telecom lawyer and longtime Federal Communications Commission official dropped by a reception at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and met the incoming president, who recognized Carr and praised his work, according to people familiar with the matter. Two days later, Trump named Carr to lead the agency.

That early nod, which Trump announced before key positions such as secretaries of Treasury and Commerce, gave Carr a head start in shaping the next administration’s media and technology agenda. Now he is promising to wield his expertise to help Trump pursue his attacks on Big Tech and major broadcast networks.

The appellate-law expert spent recent years developing a knack for conservative media, winning fans on the pro-Trump right. Two days after Trump’s announcement, he did a Fox News interview in Texas and attended a SpaceX rocket launch. At the launch site, Carr flashed a thumbs-up while standing between Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who is one of Trump’s closest informal advisers—and whose rocket and satellite company has extensive business before the FCC.

“He’s made it very clear he wants to be an activist chairman,” said Tom Wheeler, a Democrat who ran the FCC during the Obama administration and called Carr “incredibly bright, savvy and politically sophisticated.”

Combative vision

Carr espouses a combative vision for how the FCC, long known for mundane functions such as auctioning radio spectrum, should use its power. He wrote the conservative policy agenda Project 2025’s chapter on the agency, and his approach is infused with a sense that tech and media companies have been unduly harsh toward conservatives.