President Donald Trump lit into ABC and NBC for refusing to interrupt regularly scheduled programming to air his speech Thursday night on election integrity.
Trump, who has for years feuded with the country’s most prominent media companies, claimed without evidence that ABC and NBC declined to cover the speech because they were complicit in a larger fraud.
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“They and others in the media are part of a plot,” Trump said. “They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left.”
ABC and NBC did not specify why they declined to air the speech, but networks are often loath to grant time to presidents for overtly political purposes. Fellow broadcast network Fox took the speech live while CBS preempted programming for a special report, in which it aired part of the speech and explained Trump’s long history of falsehoods on the topic of election security.
Trump asserted that ABC and NBC should lose their government-issued broadcast licenses, something that he’s repeatedly suggested and something that his Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, has taken unprecedented steps to doing, particularly with ABC, in recent months. Carr called in ABC’s eight broadcast station licenses for early review over an investigation into the network’s diversity practices.
“They can’t have a great country. And that’s true. You can’t have a great country without free and fair elections,” Trump said. “Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses. They use our public multi-billion-dollar-in-value airways for absolutely no money. They pay nothing. All we want is honesty in our elections and honesty and reporting. They pay nothing for multibillion dollar assets.”
ABC and NBC did not respond immediately for a request for comment; nor did the FCC.
Trump, who has for years feuded with the country’s most prominent media companies, claimed without evidence that ABC and NBC declined to cover the speech because they were complicit in a larger fraud.
Get a curated selection of 10 of our best stories in your inbox every weekend.
“They and others in the media are part of a plot,” Trump said. “They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left.”
ABC and NBC did not specify why they declined to air the speech, but networks are often loath to grant time to presidents for overtly political purposes. Fellow broadcast network Fox took the speech live while CBS preempted programming for a special report, in which it aired part of the speech and explained Trump’s long history of falsehoods on the topic of election security.
Trump asserted that ABC and NBC should lose their government-issued broadcast licenses, something that he’s repeatedly suggested and something that his Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, has taken unprecedented steps to doing, particularly with ABC, in recent months. Carr called in ABC’s eight broadcast station licenses for early review over an investigation into the network’s diversity practices.
“They can’t have a great country. And that’s true. You can’t have a great country without free and fair elections,” Trump said. “Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses. They use our public multi-billion-dollar-in-value airways for absolutely no money. They pay nothing. All we want is honesty in our elections and honesty and reporting. They pay nothing for multibillion dollar assets.”
ABC and NBC did not respond immediately for a request for comment; nor did the FCC.
