President Donald Trump called for NBC and ABC to have their licenses revoked for not airing his Thursday night speech about “election interference,” accusing the networks of being “part of a plot.”
ABC and NBC covered the speech on their streaming platforms, with both networks airing special reports summarizing Trump’s remarks once the president concluded, but he still railed against the news outlets.
“In a rare move, NBC and ABC fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech,” Trump said in the evening address. “They and others in the media are part of a plot. They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason…Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses.”
White House communications director Steven Cheung also joined in the attack. “Cowards. NBC and ABC don’t want you to hear the truth,” he said in a post on X. “All they want to do is hide the facts from YOU.”
NBC News NOW, the network’s streaming service, carried the speech live, as did ABC on its ABC News Live platform.
Fox News aired the full speech live, but CNN did not, with Kaitlan Collins explaining to viewers that the network would be “monitoring” what the president said in order to fact check the address.
“We’ll be monitoring what the president says tonight, as we always do, but aren’t taking it live, given the president has a well-documented history of saying blatantly false things about elections,” Collins said.
In the rare primetime address, Trump accused unnamed national security officials of hiding information about the security of America’s elections and alleged Chinese efforts to interfere in the 2020 election in which he lost.
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