CNN and Fox News are fully handing over Trump’s execution as the civil fraud trial concludes.
CNN, Fox News and MSNBC all held a live news conference Thursday from former President Donald J. Trump on the final day of his civil fraud trial, a stark reminder that the former president’s legal troubles provide him with a uniquely outrageous media platform while he is seeking the Republican nomination.
His appearance lasted just a few minutes, but viewers were treated to an unfiltered barrage of inflammatory and misleading comments, with Mr Trump attacking President Biden as a “cunning” politician who “couldn’t string two sentences together.”
Fraud allegations against a former president are undoubtedly newsworthy, but Trump has used the legal proceedings as an opportunity to steal the media spotlight — a notable advantage over rivals like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, who are vying for comparable airtime. .
The episode also highlighted the difficult choices facing television journalists as the 2024 campaign begins in earnest on Monday with the Iowa caucuses: how to handle live coverage of Mr. Trump, given his penchant for making baseless claims.
“We just have to do a lot of fact checking — and brace ourselves, because this is going to take a while,” CNN anchor Brianna Keilar said Thursday after her network reported Trump’s comments in full. She and a co-host, Boris Sanchez, spent several minutes refuting several of Mr. Trump’s claims at the news conference, which Mr. Sanchez described as “largely false.”
In the years since Mr. Trump left the White House, TV producers have found it easier to justify not delivering his remarks live since he was no longer in power. Even Fox News, which once helped boost Trump’s status among the American right, refused to air live interviews with the former president for nearly two years.
With Mr. Trump now leading in many polls for the Republican nomination, networks can become more flexible by having him appear live on air. Fox News held a live town hall with Mr. Trump in Iowa on Wednesday evening.
On Thursday, Fox News covered Trump’s Manhattan press conference as it happened. Host John Roberts took the opportunity to reminisce about Trump’s lengthy and freewheeling press conferences during his presidency, saying Thursday’s appearance “could be a harbinger of things to come.”
His co-host, Sandra Smith, reminded viewers that Mr. Trump had been ordered to pay $5 million to the writer E. Jean Carroll in a sexual abuse and defamation case — despite Mr. Trump’s claim to the press conference that “I have no idea who this woman is.”
MSNBC took a more cautious approach. The cable channel, which is popular with liberals, only chimed in halfway through Trump’s news conference, when he began taking questions from reporters. The network aired his comments for about two minutes before he cut out.