Trump Excoriates ABC and NBC for Blowing Off His Speech — Calls for ‘A Revocation of Their Licences’

President Donald Trump laced into ABC and NBC for not airing his speech on election integrity live on broadcast air Thursday night.

In a fiery one-minute portion of his address to the nation, the president denounced the networks for not airing the speech live — and bizarrely accused them of wanting to conceal corruption.

“In a rare move, NBC and ABC fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech,” Trump said. “They knew what it was about because of the fact that they don’t like the topic because they know how corrupt our system is and they don’t want to reveal it. They and others in the media are part of a plot. They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want keep it going. They want to protect the radical left.”

The president went on to threaten their broadcast licenses, as he has numerous times before.

“You can’t have a great country without free and fair elections,” Trump said. “Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses they use our public multi-billion dollar in value airways for absolutely no money they pay nothing all we want is honesty in our elections and honesty in reporting they pay a nothing for multi billion dollar Assets. Great damage has been done to our country. Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen. And the trust of the American people was lost. This cannot be allowed to continue.”

Trump, according to multiple fact checkers, made a bevy of false or baseless claims during his roughly 25-minute address. While ABC and NBC opted not to broadcast it live, CBS News aired most of the address with a disclaimer at the beginning and a comprehensive fact-check at the end.

There is precedent for not airing primetime presidential speeches. The networks previously declined to air addresses from Preisdents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Both ABC and NBC did air the speech on their streaming platforms ABC News Live and NBC News Now. A spokesperson for ABC told Mediaite prior to the speech, “ABC News will run President Trump’s speech on ABC News Live and ABC News Radio with comprehensive, anchored coverage. We will also cover the speech in our regular network newscasts and, as always, our Special Report team is fully prepared to break into network programming to deliver live updates and reporting should significant developments occur.”

Watch above, via CBS.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!