Photo courtesy of The Washington Post
A majority of television news networks cut away from President Trump’s remarks last night on the election after he made a series of baseless claims of fraudulent voting.
MSNBC was the first, cutting away just 36 seconds into the White House press conference, followed by ABC, CBS, NBC, and NPR just a few moments later. CNN and Fox News received flak for continuing to cover the President’s remarks, however, both outlets acknowledged that the President provided no evidence of his claims of voter fraud, reports The New York Times.
President Trump’s news conference took aim at the evening newscasts of ABC, NBC, and CBS, which generally receive a much larger and broader viewership. Among his many claims, President Trump argued that Democrats were “trying to steal the election.”
News anchors were quick to respond to the President’s claims with extensive fact-checking, as reported by the Poynter Institute.
“We are watching President Trump speaking live from the White House, and we have to interrupt here because the President made a number of false statements including the notion that there has been fraudulent voting,” said NBC’s Nightly News weekday host Lester Holt. “There has been no evidence of that.”
“Here we are again in the unusual position of not only interrupting the President of the United States but correcting the President of the United States,” said MSNBC chief anchor Brian Williams. “There are no illegal votes that we know of, there has been no Trump victory that we know of.”
CNN’s Anderson Cooper made a particularly harsh critique of the President following the broadcast: “That’s the President of the United States. Most powerful person in the world. We see him like an obese turtle on his back flailing in the hot sun realizing his time is over. But he just hasn’t accepted it, and he wants to take everyone down with him, including this country.”
The Poynter Institute’s Politifact provides a thorough review of the accuracy of the President’s statements, providing relevant context for each claim with reporting from each state implicated.
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