New York: How the times change. Networks ‘ABC’, ‘CBS’ and ‘NBC’ all cut away from President Donald Trump as he spoke from the White House. Donald Trump was making an unfounded accusation that the presidential election was being stolen from him when the networks cut him out.
Trump tried to commandeer Thursday the nation’s airwaves at a time when the evening newscasts are shown on the East Coast. At that point of time counting revealed his leads in Pennsylvania and Georgia were dwindling.
MSNBC’s Brian Williams also interrupted the president. ‘Fox News Channel’ and ‘CNN’ aired the president’s full address. However later, CNN’s Anderson Cooper said Trump was ‘like an obese turtle on his back, flailing in the hot sun realising his time was over’.
Network personalities had sharply criticised Trump after his angry, middle-of-the-night speech following Election Day. However, they had aired that talk in full. Trump was more subdued Thursday. Yet he offered a litany of complaints about ‘suppression’ polls, mail-in voting and fraud that he never specified.
“We have to interrupt here, because the president has made a number of false statements. He has said that there has been fraudulent voting,” said NBC’s Lester Holt. “There has been no evidence of that.”
CBS’ Norah O’Donnell broke in to ask correspondent Nancy Cordes to fact-check Trump’s assertion that if ‘legal votes’ were counted, he would easily win the election. Cordes said there is no indication of a substantive number of illegal votes cast. She said Trump’s reference to votes arriving late was ‘another falsehood’.
MSNBC cut away from Trump to anchor Brian Williams. “Here we are again in the unusual position of not only interrupting the president of the United States but correcting him,” he said. “There are no illegal votes that we know of, there has been no Trump victory that we know of,” he added.
After ABC ended its coverage, the network’s White House correspondent, Jonathan Karl, said there was no evidence of illegal votes. “What he seems to be frustrated by is…that it takes time to count votes,” Karl said. “It’s always taken time to count votes. But especially in this election.”
While CNN kept Trump on the air, a chyron displayed under him. It said, “Without any evidence, Trump says he’s being cheated.” Anchor Jake Tapper looked weary when it was over.
“What a sad night for the United States of America to hear their president say that. He is falsely accusing people of trying to steal the election, trying to attack democracy in that way,” said Tapper. “Lie after lie after lie. Pathetic,” Tapper added.
The New York Post is a prominent Trump media ally. It headlined a story on the speech, “Donald Trump makes baseless election fraud claims in White House address.” CBS News’ John Dickerson said Trump’s speech ‘felt like kind of a deflated recitation’.
Meanwhile in another outburst early Friday Trump alleged that the Democrats sabotaged the election process. He blamed ‘Big Media, Big Money and Big Tech’ for coming to the aid of the Democrats.
Trump attacked the electoral process. He claimed that the ballot counting process was aimed at decreasing his lead in battleground states. He also blamed election workers without evidence and said that they were secretly supporting the Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden.
“Suppression. There are few states yet to be decided in the presidential race. The voting apparatus is run by Democrats in these states. We were winning at those key locations by a lot actually. And then our numbers getting wheedled away miraculously in secret,” Trump said.
