President Donald Trump has self-soothed after his primetime TV address was relentlessly ridiculed.
In an attempt to rehash old conspiracies about what he calls voter fraud and manipulation from bad actors, the president, 80, set up an address to the nation on Thursday.
He promised something “big,” but what came was a familiar MAGAfied version of the truth—and a beating from the press afterward. Even Fox News struggled to spin Trump airing his alternative truths.
“Fox News has not seen the evidence yet and is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president’s statement and claims,” the network’s White House correspondent Aishah Hasnie said of alleged evidence that electronic voting machines are easily compromised, after it aired just over five minutes of the address before pivoting back to the subject of Iran.
This was one of a pile of negative reviews from networks, correspondents, and contributors from across the spectrum. The reviews were so bad, in fact, that a White House lackey was forced to devote their Thursday night responding to every piece of criticism in a petty revenge tour.
Even still, Trump loaded up Truth Social on Friday morning to act like none of this dissent ever took place. “Great reviews on speech last night. Big audience,” he declared, ignoring the criticism.
It is also unclear how Trump knows how large the “audience” was, as figures on TV viewership are not yet public. It could be that he is speaking about the White House YouTube livestream, which drew 540,000 pairs of eyes.
He added, “Pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT!!! Thank you! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
He was not so conciliatory during the speech, touching on the news that some networks didn’t think it was worth airing his rambling whatsoever. He said that the guilty parties, ABC and NBC, should lose their licenses as a result.
“In a rare move, NBC and ABC Fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech. 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,” Trump said.
He angrily claimed that the networks and other media were “part of a plot.”
“They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left. They can’t have a great country, and that’s true.
“You can’t have a great country without free and fair elections. Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses.
“They use our public multi-billion-dollar-in-value airwaves for absolutely no money. They pay nothing. All we want is honesty in our elections and honesty in reporting. They pay 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,” he added.
