Former CNN host and White House correspondent Jim Acosta shared a report and touted it as an important detail to understand ahead of the big speech: “Trump and company are trying to lay a trap for the networks.”
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Axios reported that Trump’s forthcoming speech on Thursday night, where he is expected to discuss 2020 election conspiracies, presents networks with an awkward predicament: either they air false information from the president or they start a new phase in an ongoing war with the White House.
When presidents go to the networks for air time, it typically has to do with something significant like the announcement of a war or the capture of Osama bin Laden. Trump wants to make what critics believe will be political speech from the Oval Office with conspiracy theories about his 2020 election loss.
According to the White House, it will involve commentary about “free and fair elections.” He has been playing it up as a “very big announcement” and “really big news” about the security of the U.S. voting system.
“They’ve spent years trying to avoid amplifying Trump’s false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election,” said Axios. “Yet they also must contend with an FCC that, under chairman and Trump ally Brendan Carr, has opened a series of investigations into broadcast networks.”
Airing the speech means networks will be putting their stamp of legitimacy on what the president says, unless they follow with their own fact-check of the remarks or put a disclaimer at the bottom of the screen.
In the past six years, networks have cut away from Trump when he starts to discuss 2020 election conspiracies. A large part of that comes from the networks being sued by election companies like Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems. The latter is still embroiled in a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit with Fox News.
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If networks deny Trump, it won’t be the first time. At various points, Axios said, networks have refused to cover remarks from Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Politico reported on Thursday morning that Republicans are terrified of the speech.
One GOP strategist suggested that focusing on an election from six years ago at a time when Americans are struggling isn’t going to help Republicans win in November.
“There are a lot of people in our base, as I do, who believe it was a grave injustice,” Steve Cortes, a former Trump adviser, told Politico. “But I believe for the persuadable voters, the non-MAGA people, talking about an election from six years ago sounds like sour grapes.”
George Conway, co-founder of the anti-Trump Republican group The Lincoln Project, told MS NOW’s Katy Tur on Tuesday, “I think this is all going to backfire very badly on President Trump.”
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