President Trump is again training his fire on major TV networks—this time over a speech they didn't fully air. After ABC and NBC chose not to break into regular programming Thursday night for his address on "election integrity," Trump accused them, without offering evidence, of participating in a broader scheme to hide fraud, the Washington Post reports. "They and others in the media are part of a plot," he said, adding that the alleged wrongdoing should cost them their government broadcast licenses.
While Fox carried the speech live and CBS ran portions within a special report that noted Trump's record of false election claims, ABC and NBC gave no public explanation for their decisions. CNN and MS Now also interspersed the speech with commentary and analysis, the Hill reports. Networks aren't required to carry presidential addresses in primetime, which earlier presidents tended to reserve for major announcements, Politico reports.
- In 2014, Barack Obama's White House complained when ABC, CBS, and NBC didn't air his primetime speech on immigration reform, though he didn't threaten to strip them of their licenses. Some networks also skipped Joe Biden's 2022 speech on threats to democracy, in which he denounced the "extremism" of Trump and the "MAGA Republicans."
Trump has repeatedly floated license revocation for outlets he criticizes, and his FCC ally Brendan Carr has already ordered an early review of ABC station licenses tied to a probe of the network's diversity practices—an unusually aggressive move. Trump argued Thursday that networks "pay nothing" for access to the public airwaves and said "fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses.
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