Politics

MSNBC refused to air Donald Trump’s speech. Rachel Maddow explains it won’t broadcast lies.

Rachel Maddow
Rachel Maddow Photo: Screenshot

After his arraignment yesterday, Donald Trump delivered a speech in Mar-a-Lago attacking New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his family, painting himself as the victim, questioning the motives of his accusers and the judge on his case, and airing various grievances.

And if people wanted to see it, they had to watch Fox News or CNN or search for it online. MSNBC refused to carry it.

Out gay host Rachel Maddow explained why.

“As far as we can tell and what we’re prepared for here is that this is basically a campaign speech in which he’s repeating his same lies and allegations against his perceived enemies,” she told viewers. “It is just getting started.”

“So far he’s just giving his normal list of grievances, we don’t consider that necessarily newsworthy and there’s a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things.”

Maddow said that MSNBC would monitor his comments and report on anything that he says that’s actually newsworthy.

Forbes notes that she may have been referring to the defamation lawsuit that Dominion Voting Systems filed against Fox News for falsely stating that the company’s voting technology rigged the 2020 election.

“Our country is going to hell,” Trump said during his speech as he attacked Bragg.

Trump said that Bragg is a “George Soros-backed prosecutor,” referring to the Jewish philanthropist who makes frequent appearances in rightwing conspiracy theories. Soros donated to Color of Change PAC, which works to elect Black people, and Color of Change PAC endorsed Bragg, but Soros denied knowing who Bragg even was.

He also attacked Judge Juan Mechan’s daughter and said she “now receives money from the Biden-Harris campaign.” She works for a digital consulting firm that did work for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. She isn’t the judge in the case and therefore it’s not a conflict of interest.

Major news networks came under fire during the 2016 election for airing Trump’s rallies as if his entire speeches were news with little regard for whether what he was saying was true, effectively giving his campaign hours and hours of free airtime.

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