CNN cut away from President Donald Trump’s re-election announcement speech on Tuesday night after he quickly began attacking the media, bringing on chants of “CNN sucks!” from a massive crowd in Orlando, Florida.
“Within two minutes, he did talk about the economy,” CNN anchor John Berman said. “But, within four minutes, it was attacks on the media.”
MSNBC chose not to air the lengthy speech at all, other than a small box at the bottom of the screen that ran during Chris Hayes’ show. Fox News aired the entire rally live.
The president quickly began decrying the “fake news” during his speech, as he has done in nearly every one of his Make America Great Again rallies.
“That is a lot of fake news back there,” Trump told the crowd. “The amount of press we have tonight reminds me of the Academy Awards before it went political and the ratings went down the tubes.”
Later, the president said that “one word can ruin your career. I have to be very careful with the fake news back there.”
The speech hit on all the standard themes of a Trump rally, including attacks on Hillary Clinton and a widely debunked talking point about the former secretary of state “acid-washing” her emails that has been echoed by Fox News host Sean Hannity.
At one point, Trump called up departing press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who earlier announced that she was taking her final flight aboard Air Force One.
CNN and MSNBC are likely to face tough programming decisions throughout the 2020 campaign about when to air President Trump’s rallies live and when to wait for him to make actual news. If Tuesday night is any indication, both networks may opt to take a more wait-and-see approach.
