ABC News, NBC News, and CNN made a deliberate choice not to broadcast President Donald Trump’s primetime speech addressing election security. During his address, Trump claimed that crucial information about the 2020 election had been concealed from the public. He accused China of interfering in the election and referenced newly declassified documents reportedly from the CIA and FBI. These documents suggested the Chinese Communist Party aimed to disrupt his reelection and allegedly manufactured illegal ballots favoring Joe Biden.
Leading up to the speech, five networks had crafted strategies on how to handle Trump’s remarks. A CNN representative informed Fox News Digital that the network intended to treat Trump’s speech as a news event, providing analysis and commentary while offering the speech on its website and streaming platform. CNN anchor John King emphasized that the network’s decision was influenced by Trump’s history of misleading and false statements regarding election security. King mentioned CNN’s commitment to independent verification of the declassified documents shared by the Trump administration.
While ABC News chose to stream Trump’s speech on its platform and radio, NBC News similarly opted to carry it on a streaming platform and later aired a recap. ABC and NBC owned by Sinclair Broadcasting Group preempted their networks to broadcast the speech. Trump criticized ABC and NBC for not airing his speech live, referring to them as “fake news,” and accused them of participating in a scheme to conceal corruption within the system. He suggested that their broadcasting licenses should be revoked due to the supposed fraud in elections.
CBS News aired a special report providing analysis, initially tapping into the speech minutes after Trump began. It pivoted away after Trump’s criticisms of ABC and NBC. MSNBC covered the first 15 minutes of his speech, moving to commentary thereafter. Not airing presidential addresses is not new. In 2014, ABC, CBS, and NBC did not broadcast President Barack Obama’s immigration speech. The networks also avoided President Joe Biden’s 2022 speech in Philadelphia criticizing MAGA Republicans.