President Trump criticized ABC and NBC for their decisions not to air his primetime address about his claims of “election fraud” live on Thursday night, saying their actions “should mean a revocation of their licenses.”
When the president announced the subject of his speech would be about “election integrity,” earlier this week, media outlets debated about how to cover it, since it was expected that he would dredge up old conspiracy theories that have long been debunked and to which the majority of Americans don't share his conclusion that the 2020 election was stolen.
Much of what he said last night did follow that pattern along with the announcement that the administration would release new unclassified material that would implicate that China meddled in the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
Cable news channels decided their own path of coverage, with CNN fact-checking Trump’s speech in real-time, while MS NOW ran regular programming but broke in with analysis when warranted. Fox News, stung by a 2022 defamation lawsuit that forced the network to fork over $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems, reminded its viewers that it has seen no proof to Trump’s claims.
“Fox News has not seen that evidence yet and is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president’s statement and claims at this time,” a reporter said during the speech.
Tony Dokoupil, news anchor for CBS News, which has come under considerable criticism from Trump’s opponents, was candid in his response to the speech.
“This is a vitally, vitally important topic, and the president has a terrible track record on it,” he said.
While both NBC and ABC chose not to air the speech live, they did break in when appropriate and held post-speech analysis special reports.
The networks’ decisions on whether the air the speech are not unprecedented. Networks have declined to cover certain speeches by Trump’s predecessors as well.
This didn’t mollify the president, though.
‘“They and others in the media are part of a plot,” he claimed. “They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left. They can’t have a great country. And that’s true. You can’t have a great country without free and fair elections”.
