Trump Interview With Ingraham Goes Past Scheduled D-Day Ceremony Start Due to Macron Delay (UPDATED)

By Colby HallJun 6th, 2019, 6:41 am
 


The ceremonies commemorating the 75th anniversary of D-Day Thursday morning were set to start sharply at 11:00 AM local time, but actually started 15 30 minutes later than planned. According to MSNBC White House reporter Hallie Jackson, President Donald Trump’s conversation with Fox News primetime host Laura Ingraham may be the reason for the delay. It was later revealed, after the initial publishing of this post, however, that French President Emanuel Macron was 30 minutes late and the primary reason the delayed start to the ceremony.

Jackson noted via Twitter that a French feed revealed that Trump was sitting with Ingraham 14 minutes after the scheduled 11:00 AM start time, before noting an announcement declaring a 15-minute delay, suggesting that the delay was due to Trump’s conversation with the Fox News host. Jackson tweeted:

Like many American news and opinion hosts and anchors, Ingraham joined a massive entourage of media to cover the commemoration events, hosting Wednesday night’s episode of her show with gravestones of fallen heroes as her backdrop. Ingraham scored the somewhat elusive Trump interview which reportedly was scheduled just before the Normandy ceremony was set to begin, but appeared to run long.

CNN’s Kevin Liptak also tweeted:

AP’s Jonathan Lemire appeared to confirm this report as well:

Bloomberg’s White House reporter pushed back a bit on this, however, noting that French President Emmanuel Macron was also late:

Ask any television producer who has ever scheduled, conducted or arranged such a high-profile interview, the odds that it will run long are extremely high. As such, one can reasonably question the wisdom of scheduling such an interview just before the D-Day ceremony to start.

But if the D-Day ceremony was in fact delayed by a Fox News interview as was suggested by MSNBC’s Jackson,  this could be seen by many as a disrespectful to the heroic WW II veterans in attendance made to wait 15 minutes for a Fox News interview.

Update: CNN’s Jim Acosta appeared to confirm the report that Trump’s Fox News interview delayed the ceremony start, telling New Day viewers “One of the reasons why President Trump was delayed, one of the reasons he was late getting here, he was sitting down with a Fox News personality before his speech began. So it’s possible he was dishing out a lot of the red meat while he was sitting down with fox before giving the speech.”

Acosta then added praise for Trump’s speech, with “But honestly, you have to put that to the side and recognize this was just a really captivating, stirring remarkable moment for the entire world to witness. Politics was just put aside, washed aside as we remember the bravery and currently of the men today.”

UPDATE: Further reporting, including a clarification from Jackson, appears to confirm the Jennifer Jacobs account.

Editor’s note – this post has been updated since original publishing to better reflect the variety of reports.

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Colby Hall - Founding Editor

Colby Hall is the Founding Editor of Mediaite.com. He is also a Peabody Award-winning television producer of non-fiction narrative programming as well as a terrific dancer and preparer of grilled meats.