The White House has freaked out at the response to President Donald Trump’s crackpot primetime address.
In an address from the East Room of the White House on Thursday, the 80-year-old tried to convince the nation of “shocking vulnerabilities” in U.S. election security. China, he said, rigged the 2020 election, which he happened to lose to Joe Biden.
Trump had promised to reveal “really big news” during the address, but, in truth, he pored over familiar grievances and proved Republicans, said to be “scared s---less” about what he was going to say, right.
The only thing that was “big,” in fact, was the level to which the media quickly dismissed the president’s 27-minute rant. The reaction from the White House, in turn, was even bigger.
Lackeys running the “Rapid Response 47” account were tasked with going on X to individually call out the hosts, correspondents, contributors, and networks that didn’t willingly lap up Trump’s rambling.
First in their scope was Pierre Thomas, senior justice correspondent at ABC News. He had said on the network that “there is no evidence that they [China] were able to change the outcome of votes.”
“From the same people who brought you the Russia Collusion Hoax. Laughable,” the official account responded. The “hoax” in question is a counter-narrative set up by top MAGA figures that attacks the legitimacy and conclusions of multiple investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election, which Donald Trump won.
ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl was also in the White House’s sights. He said on Special Report that the president had exaggerated the findings in the newly declassified intelligence documents released to support his ramblings.
“Fake News @jonkarl immediately went on TV to accuse President Trump of lying — even though he admitted he still has ‘a lot more to look through,’” the account handler moaned. “Notice how he doesn’t seem to care about critical intelligence being willfully kept from the President during the 2020 campaign.”
The White House claims that China had access to U.S. voter data during that cycle. In a separate post, the Rapid Response account said that this “was purposely kept from President Trump and the American people in an unprecedented coverup to undermine his first administration and his 2020 campaign.”
The Democratic U.S. Senator from Virginia, Mark Warner, said on Special Report that he was “embarrassed” that networks covered Trump’s “falsehoods” without scrutiny.
“As a matter of fact, before I start, as an American, not as an elected official, I was embarrassed that the president of the United States went before our whole country, and networks like yours carried this as news, as opposed to a rehash of falsehoods,” Warner said.
Tagging him on X, the Rapid Response account said that he “melts down over the fact that TV networks carried @POTUS’ address to the nation. Mark is furious that President Trump is bringing transparency to this long-avoided issue.”
Warner and host Tony Dokoupil sparred during the broadcast, but even the MAGA-coded frontman accused Trump of lying. Rapid Response, of course, failed to mention this. “And honestly, much of what the president has said on this topic has been false,” Dokoupil told viewers. “Most notably, of course, the claim that he won the 2020 election when, of course, he did not.”
Major Elliot Garrett, Chief Washington Correspondent at CBS News, wasn’t as lucky as Dokoupil. The former senior White House correspondent for Fox News was called out during the Rapid Response rampage. He was accused of “moving the goalposts.”
“I hear that there is an assessment that in an abstract experiment, it was found that one type of machine might be vulnerable—one type of machine,” he had said on Special Report.
The White House-linked account said this is “one type of machine too many.”
MS NOW was also given the treatment for cutting away as Trump began rehashing old MAGA talking points about elections. “MSDNC — which a few call ‘MS NOW’ but many others call ‘group therapy for the mentally deranged’ — cut out immediately as @POTUS started to describe shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure. ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE,” the account ranted, to finish off a high-strung night of posting.
The account’s ranting reflects Trump’s anxiety over the response to his claims. The president himself said that ABC and NBC should lose their licenses for not airing his crackpot theories.
“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,” Trump said.
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.
