Colbert: Trump’s mass text powers ‘bad news’

Comedian Stephen Colbert says he is alarmed by the possibility that President-elect Donald Trump could send the entire nation “unblockable mass text messages.”

“Here’s the deal — you legally don’t have to have to follow his tweets,” Colbert said on CBS’s “The Late Show” Thursday. “You can un-follow Trump, delete Twitter, go into the world, live your life.”

{mosads}“But the bad news is, starting January 20th, Donald Trump can send unblockable mass text messages to the entire nation,” he added as audience members gasped in shock.

“The only person I would trust less with that technology is [former Rep.] Anthony Weiner [D-N.Y.]. Yes, feel free to block alerts about floods and missing persons, but if Trump wants you to know how he feels about the cast of ‘Hamilton,’ you will listen.”

New York magazine on Wednesday reported Trump could perform such a feat using the laws governing Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs).

WEAs are typically used for warning cell phone users about severe weather or missing persons in their communities, it said, but also cover “alerts issued by the president” for national emergencies.

New York added WEAs were authorized by Congress’s passage of the Warning, Alert and Response Network (WARN) Act in 2006.

Snopes.com, which debunks internet rumors, on Thursday said “no information [has] suggested that President-elect Trump had plans to frivolously mass text the United States.”

The website added, however, it remains “undetermined” if such an act is possible under current Federal Communications Commission guidelines.