Trump Declares ‘You Have to Have a Free Press’ — Hours After Threatening the Licenses of ABC and NBC

President Donald Trump — who has sued three news organizations within the past 18 months, and threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of two networks within the past 24 hours — said Monday that without a free press, “you don’t have a country.”

During a question-and-answer session with reporters from the Oval Office on Monday, the president made the surprising comment as part of a rant about the court system in the state of New York — which he called “corrupt.”

“You can’t have a corrupt court system,” Trump said. “You can’t have that, you have to have borders. And you have to have a free press. Otherwise, you don’t have a country.”

The comment was somewhat head-scratching, given that it came on the heels of a fiery rant against NBC and ABC on Truth Social late Sunday night.

“Despite a very high popularity and, according to many, among the greatest 8 months in Presidential History, ABC & NBC FAKE NEWS, two of the worst and most biased networks in history, give me 97% BAD STORIES,” Trump wrote. “IF THAT IS THE CASE, THEY ARE SIMPLY AN ARM OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND SHOULD, ACCORDING TO MANY, HAVE THEIR LICENSES REVOKED BY THE FCC. I would be totally in favor of that because they are so biased and untruthful, an actual threat to our Democracy!!!”

He added in a subsequent post, “Why is it that ABC and NBC FAKE NEWS, two of the absolute worst and most biased networks anywhere in the World, aren’t paying Millions of Dollars a year in LICENSE FEES. They should lose their Licenses for their unfair coverage of Republicans and/or Conservatives, but at a minimum, they should pay up BIG for having the privilege of using the most valuable airwaves anywhere at anytime!!! Crooked “journalism” should not be rewarded, it should be terminated!!!”

Trump has shown his threats against news organizations are far from idle. In the past year-and-a-half, Trump has sued the Wall Street Journal, ABC, and CBS — and has extracted eight-figure settlements from the latter two organizations.

And moments before his comment underlining the importance of a free press, Trump slammed the press as “corrupt.”

“The newspapers are so dishonest and the press is totally dishonest,” Trump said. He added, “And we had a tremendous, in every way, the election. Hard to believe you can do that when you have a corrupt media. But you are. Many of you are corrupt, and it’s [sic] nothing we can do about it.”

Watch above, via Fox News.