The Sinclair Broadcasting Group recently became the largest radio network in the nation. It is aggressively pro-Trump and requires its local stations to run certain programs.

Sinclair is poised to become the nation’s largest owner of TV stations and, with its recent hire of former Trump aide Boris Epshteyn, viewers can expect to see more of the chain’s political programming. Epshteyn is Sinclair’s “chief political analyst.”

Listeners to WJAR in Providence were shocked to learn that their local news station had become a conservative news outlet.

Julian Sinclair Smith launched the broadcasting company in 1971 in Baltimore. His son, David Smith, took the reins in the 1990s, expanding its reach to 81 markets across the country.

While Sinclair once broadcast to relatively few homes, it is now poised to reach 72 percent of American households if its acquisition of Tribune Media Company is approved. The $3.9 billion purchase would add 42 stations to its holdings.

It could expand Sinclair’s reach to 87.3 million homes, of the 119.6 million American households that the Neilsen foundation estimates have televisions.

Smith and Sinclair pull no punches about their political leanings. The company’s controversies date to the era of George W. Bush, when, among other things, the broadcaster sent a team to Iraq to report “good news” about the war; aired “Stolen Honor,” a documentary critical of John Kerry’s anti-Vietnam war activism, weeks before the 2004 election; and refused to air a “Nightline” program that listed the name of every American soldier killed in Iraq.

Sinclair is to radio news what FOX is to television news.