CNN and MSNBC decided to skip live carriage of former President Donald Trump’s post-arraignment speech at Mar-A-Lago on Tuesday night, leaving Fox News as the only major cable news network to cover it live.
Fox News not only carried the entire speech, at one point the network went to a split screen of President Joe Biden speaking at the White House with the chyron, “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.”
In the speech, Trump blasted the special prosecutor Jack Smith and aired a long list of grievances, while making the claim that Biden is behind the charges against him. In fact, Biden’s attorney general Merrick Garland appointed Smith as special prosecutor to investigate Trump, and also appointed a special prosecutor to probe Biden’s retention of classified documents.
Earlier in the evening, when Trump arrived at his Bedminster, NJ club to give the speech, CNN’s Anderson Cooper explained to viewers, “We are not going to take it live but we’ll monitor it” with anything that might be newsworthy.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow told viewers, “There is a cost to us as a news organization to knowingly broadcast untrue things. We are here to bring you the news. It hurts our ability to do that if we live broadcast what we fully expect in advance to be a litany of lies and false accusations, no matter who says them.”
After Trump’s arraignment in April on New York state felony charges, both Fox News and CNN carried the speech, although the latter cut away shortly before it ended.
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