Donald Trump launched a blistering attack on the American TV networks that refused to screen his primetime address detailing crackpot claims of election rigging on Thursday night.
Furious at the snub, the president claimed that ABC and NBC should lose their licenses.
The networks that did cover the speech live questioned the veracity of Trump’s claims that America’s democracy-defining voting system was corrupt.
MAGA-coded CBS noted that much of what the president said about election rigging was “false” before broadcasting most of the address from the White House East Room.
Fox News admitted after the speech that it had been unable to confirm some of the claims Trump made about election abuse in the United States.
Speaking in a hoarse voice and reading from a teleprompter, Trump said: “In a rare move, NBC and ABC Fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech. They knew what it was about because of the fact that they don’t like the topic because they know how corrupt our system is and they don’t want to reveal it.”
He angrily claimed that the networks and other media were “part of a plot.”
“They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left. They can’t have a great country, and that’s true.
“You can’t have a great country without free and fair elections. Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses.
“They use our public multi-billion-dollar-in-value airwaves for absolutely no money. They pay nothing. All we want is honesty in our elections and honesty in reporting. They pay nothing for multi-billion-dollar assets. Great damage has been done to our country. Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen, and the trust of the American people was lost. This cannot be allowed to continue,” he added.
CNN, a favorite Trump target, blew off Trump’s grandstand speech as old news. The president insisted that declassified intelligence documents proved a pattern of fraudulent voting in elections.
But CNN’s Senior National Security reporter Zachary Cohen insisted: “None of the declassified information supports the claim that any previous election results—including the 2020 presidential contest that Trump lost—were manipulated by foreign interference or fraud in a way that would’ve changed the outcome.”
MS NOW also poured scorn on the president’s claims of election interference from China and the failure of previous administrations to prevent voting machine failures. It quoted Senator Mark Warner as saying Congress was aware of Trump’s claims and agreed “on a bipartisan basis” that “no foreign government changed any votes.”
Trump had suggested that there was a big problem after listing his self-proclaimed successes since returning to the White House.
He claimed that if there was “no trust,” there was “no greatness.”
The president went on to retread a well-worn diatribe comprising conspiracy theories about alleged Chinese interference in U.S. elections.
He said they included “hacking, exploitation and foreign interference.”
His claims were part of his theory that he was robbed of victory in the 2020 presidential election, which Joe Biden won.
Trump blamed Barack Obama and the “deep state” for plotting to cover up the truth.
He singled out Michigan as a state where the voting system was corrupted.
