CNN, Fox News and MSNBC broadcast a live news conference from Donald J. Trump on Thursday on the final day of his civil fraud trial, a stark reminder that the former president's legal troubles offer an exceptionally huge media platform as he seeks Republican nomination. .
His appearance lasted only a few minutes, but viewers were treated to an unfiltered flurry of incendiary and misleading comments, in which Trump attacked President Biden as a “crooked” politician who “couldn't string two sentences together.”
Fraud charges against a former president are certainly newsworthy, but Trump has used the legal proceedings as an opportunity to garner media attention, a notable advantage over rivals such as Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida and Nikki Haley, who can fight similar charges. airtime.
Trump campaign advisers were especially pleased that CNN broadcast Trump live and allowed him to express his talking points, unmediated, to the American public. This framing (on Trump's own terms, with television cameras capturing his every word without real-time fact-checking) is exactly how Trump and his allies anticipate they can exploit any criminal trial that may occur during the season. electoral.
For media outlets, the episode highlighted the difficult decisions journalists face as the 2024 campaign begins Monday with the Iowa caucuses: how to handle live coverage of Trump given his penchant for making unsubstantiated claims.
“We just have to do a lot of fact-checking and prepare, because this is going to take a moment,” CNN anchor Brianna Keilar said after her network aired Trump's comments in their entirety. She and a co-host, Boris Sanchez, spent several minutes refuting several of Trump's claims, which Sanchez described as “largely false.”
Once Trump left the White House in 2021, television producers found it easier to justify not airing his remarks live. Even Fox News, which once helped cement Trump's status among the American right, refused to air live interviews with the former president for nearly two years.
Now that Trump leads in polls for the Republican nomination, the networks have become more flexible: Fox News hosted Trump in a live town hall in Iowa on Wednesday. That event drew 4.3 million live viewers, compared to 2.6 million who watched the CNN debate between DeSantis and Haley that aired at the same time.
On Thursday, Fox News broadcast Trump's press conference in Manhattan as it happened. Host John Roberts took the opportunity to recall Trump's long, free-wheeling appearances during his presidency, reflecting that Thursday's event “may be a harbinger of things to come.”
His co-host, Sandra Smith, reminded viewers that Trump had been ordered to pay $5 million to writer E. Jean Carroll in a sexual abuse and defamation case, despite Trump's on-air claim that ” I have no idea”. who is this woman”.
MSNBC took a more cautious approach. The cable channel, which is popular with liberals, tuned in just halfway through Trump's press conference when he began taking questions from reporters. The network aired his comments for about two minutes before cutting off.
Trump, a former reality TV star who is a master at managing the medium, suggested in his comments Thursday that he knew the legal peril of his criminal trial could turn into television gold.
“I want to go to all my trials,” he told reporters.
jonathan swan and Maggie Haberman contributed reports.
