President Donald Trump gave a primetime address to the nation Thursday night on election integrity.
Both ABC News and NBC News censored the president and didn’t bother to show the presidential address. CBS News aired the opening remarks, but then cut away the moment Trump started naming names.
CNN also refused to air the speech. MS NOW carried the first fifteen minutes before retreating to commentary.
Only Fox News, Fox Business, C-SPAN, Newsmax, and The Daily Wire broadcast the full address.
Trump didn’t take the snub quietly, and went after ABC and NBC by name during the speech itself — which was the very moment CBS cut away. The president followed up his grievance on Truth Social with a demand for federal action.
“Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses,” Trump posted. “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.”
He called ABC and NBC “the most biased networks in history” and declared they “want to protect the Radical Left” and are effectively “an arm of the Democrat Party.”
Earlier this week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) had demanded mainstream media networks censor the speech, calling it an “ethical obligation” not to broadcast the presidential address to the nation.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr signaled last year that the agency could “take a fresh look” at broadcast licenses. ABC and NBC’s national news operations aren’t licensed by the FCC, but their local affiliates are, and those licenses are renewed on a market-by-market basis.
Trump was already received $16 million from CBS in a settlement over its selective editing of a Kamala Harris “60 Minutes” interview before the 2024 election, and $15 million for his presidential library from ABC after host George Stephanopoulos made defamatory on-air claims.
Before the speech, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked by NBC News correspondent Garrett Haake why Trump was “unable to let … go” of the 2020 election.
“Well, first of all, Garrett, I think part of the problem is that the media has refused to acknowledge that tens of millions of Americans across the country share the concerns,” she responded.