Not every television network carried President Trump’s prime-time speech from the White House, and it did not escape the president’s notice.
In a meta moment on Thursday night, Mr. Trump used his address to call out ABC and NBC for not airing his live remarks, claiming the networks declined to do so “because they know how corrupt our system is and they don’t want to reveal it.” He also repeated his frequent demand that the networks’ government-issued broadcast licenses be revoked.
“They and others in the media are part of a plot,” the president said, offering no evidence for his claims.
In fact, ABC and NBC did carry Mr. Trump’s speech live on their streaming platforms. After the president concluded, both networks broke into regularly scheduled entertainment programming to air special reports that analyzed his outlandish claims about the safety of American voting systems.
Federal regulators are currently reviewing the station licenses owned by ABC, a move that the network has denounced as an “unconstitutional retaliation” for its programming.
Presidents must request airtime from television channels when they wish to speak in prime time, and in the past, network executives have been loath to accommodate speeches that they view as distinctly political in nature, especially during election years. Former Presidents Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr. both had some requests denied.
On Thursday, TV networks took varying approaches to covering Mr. Trump’s remarks. Fox News and the Fox broadcast network ran the speech in its entirety; MS NOW and CBS aired some portions live, but then cut away for analysis and fact-checking from their correspondents. CNN aired clips and reporter commentary instead of the full remarks.
Fox News, which paid $787 million to settle a defamation suit stemming from false claims about election interference that appeared on its airwaves in 2020, took a careful approach on Thursday.
After Mr. Trump concluded his remarks, Bret Baier, the channel’s chief political anchor, summarized the president’s claims about the security of electronic voting machines. But he added, in a formal tone, that Fox News “has not seen that evidence directly yet, and is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president’s statements at this time.” (Aishah Hasnie, a White House correspondent for Fox News, later repeated that caveat almost verbatim.)
Even Sean Hannity, a Trump ally, was careful not to endorse the allegations, despite saying the president’s claims were “pretty remarkable.”
“I’m sure anybody that cares about truth will want to do a deep dive into all of this,” Mr. Hannity told viewers.
Network executives had been reluctant in the run-up to Mr. Trump’s speech to say whether they would air it live. The president had been expected to delve into partisan or incendiary comments about voter fraud, creating a conundrum for producers who would need to decide whether to fact-check the president’s remarks in real time, or wait until he was finished to provide context.
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