It was US President Trump’s first live speech after the elections.
But Trump made it an interesting one by making some fiery remarks, wherein he claimed that the Democrats were using “illegal votes” to “steal the election from us.”
But a couple of TV networks in the US perhaps thought the remarks to be inappropriate, and that Trump was spreading disinformation so they decided to cut their coverage of his speech.
It was MSNBC that first pulled the plug. NBC and ABC News then followed suit. CNN and Fox News continued its coverage, though CNN flashed a superimposed caption (chyron) that said, “Without evidence, Trump says he’s being cheated.”
MSNBC anchor Brian Williams: “OK, here we are again in the unusual position of not only interrupting the president of the United States but correcting the president of the United States.”
Democratic candidate Joe Biden retorted with a tweet that “no one is going to take our democracy away from us. Not now, not ever. America has come too far, fought too many battles, and endured too much to let this happen.”
USA Today’s Editor-in-chief Nicole Carroll, for her part, took to Twitter to explain why they snipped their livestream of the press briefing.
“President Trump, without evidence, claimed the presidential election was corrupt and fraudulent. We stopped the livestream of his remarks early and have removed the video from all of our platforms. Our job is to spread truth—not unfounded conspiracies.”
This US elections is perhaps the most watched in history, where the outcome is much awaited to see how the next US President will act to make America move forward with its economy in this pandemic-stricken world.
The latest Associated Press results show Biden ahead with 264 electoral college votes against President Trump’s 214 electoral college votes.