The long rumored Trump TV is here, and it’s coopting the local news programs people imagine to be independent, but are actually becoming centrally controlled.

Sinclair Broadcasting is buying dozens of local television stations from the Tribune Company, which will expand their reach to create the largest local news broadcast empire our country has ever seen on TV.

It’s taken some very special help from the Trump Administration.

With the addition of one of Trump’s top surrogates, the stage has been set to distribute Administration propaganda nationally, without telling the audience that they’re watching biased local news, even though it’s branded ABC, CBS or NBC.

Sinclair says it has 173 television stations in 81 markets, broadcasting 514 channels and having affiliations with all the major networks.

By 2013, Sinclair Broadcasting owned more TV stations than anyone else in the country.

Now, they will vastly exceed the FCC’s cap on how much local television market share a single corporation — 39% of the national viewing market to be precise — is allowed to hold after purchasing the Tribune company’s 42 stations and 14 more in a separate deal.

But first, they cut a deal with during the campaign with Jared Kushner for “good” coverage of the Trump Administration, which seems to have paid off with a major regulatory change in their favor.

That’s why Sinclair began running softball interviews with Trump last August.

In fact, Sinclair is known for issuing “must run” orders with their slanted news.

The stories are called “Bottom Line with Boris” which only has 147 likes on its Facebook page.

“Bottom Line with Boris” propaganda defends Trump against obstruction of justice charges on Sinclair’s outlets.

There’s Trump spin on the healthcare bill, attacks on the media by Boris Epshteyn, and the kind of friendly interview with KellyAnne Conway that you don’t even see on Fox News anymore, now that her notoriously slippery propaganda has been exposed in the mainstream media.

The day after Trump’s election, Sinclair’s executives immediately cheered their chances of Republicans creating new regulations to favor their vast plan of expansion.

Politico revealed the deal in December, during the transition, meaning that the nation’s viewing public was kept in the dark about a pay for play deal by their local news broadcasters at Sinclair:

Sinclair would broadcast their Trump interviews across the country without commentary, Kushner said. Kushner highlighted that Sinclair, in states like Ohio, reaches a much wider audience — around 250,000 viewers[sic]— than networks like CNN, which reach somewhere around 30,000.

Then in April, Sinclair hired former Trump Campaign surrogate and White House Staffer Boris Epshteyn as their “Chief Political Analyst” releasing this statement confirming that they’d cut a deal with Trump:

“Over a year ago, we made a commitment to provide additional political content that goes beyond the podium to provide a true point of difference with additional context,” said Scott Livingston, Vice President of News for Sinclair Television Group.

The FCC caps broadcast licensees from reaching more than 39% of Americans to limit the amount of power concentrated into the hands of a single television broadcaster.

It took a vote on changing regulations initiated by the FCC’s fiercely partisan Trump appointee Ajit Pai who resurrected a regulation that the Obama Administration killed in 2016, reinstating rules about UHF TV signals to enable the $3.9 billion dollar deal that will take Trump TV from 30% of America’s television households up to 72% of local viewers.

Sinclair will now by free to wildly exceed the cap.

Industry executives cheered, while public interest advocates blasted the FCC Commissioner for his nakedly partisan decision to encourage media consolidation:

“No one, including Chairman Pai and Commissioner O’Rielly — disputes that there is any remaining policy justification for UHF Discount, “ said Andrew Jay Schwartzman of Georgetown’s Institute for Public Representation. “Today’s disgraceful vote is a cynical political ploy to help large broadcast companies become larger, notwithstanding the lack of any sustainable legal rationale for doing so.”

Seattle has three TV stations that could wind up owned by Sinclair, including two of the top four stations by ratings.

FCC rules bar ownership of more than two stations in a market.

They also bar owning two of the top four stations in a market.

However, the Seattle Times reports that Sinclair’s CEO believes his company will get to keep all three stations: