Some liberal media outlets have been facing criticism for not airing former President Donald Trump’s victory speech in New Hampshire on Tuesday live. Like those outlets, including CNN and MSNBC, did last week after his win in the Iowa caucuses, they cut off the GOP frontrunner’s speech with commentary and fact-checkers.
MSNBC’s ‘problematic’ refusal to air Trump’s speech could help GOP frontrunner, Democratic strategist says https://t.co/DDrs9VybQb
— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 22, 2024
Since then, they have been called out by several people who think the decision is unfair to Trump. However, there are some who believe the media houses’ strategy might be doing Trump more good than harm.
According to former Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tuxor Dixon, cutting off Trump’s speech only gives people more reason to want to see the uncensored version more.
Speaking to Fox News, Dixon explained, “I personally sort of love this approach because I see them doing this, and I think any time you ban someone from seeing something, they want to see it more. They get more excited. And Trump has a unique political movement that is more old school, where people are passing pamphlets and talking, so that makes them even more likely to say to their neighbor, hey, have you seen what they’re doing to him? There’s something up with this. Why do they want to hide him from us? And so I think it gives him power.”
He went further to state that the outlets that are refusing to air Trump’s victory speech in full are “feeding right into him” without knowing it. “It makes me sort of sit back and chuckle at how silly they are,” he said.
Democratic strategist Kevin Walling also believes that censoring Trump’s live remarks is more harmful than the liberal media outlets realize.
“I doubt there’s many people watching MSNBC, or CNN for that matter, that don’t already have a formed opinion about the former president,” he said, speaking to Fox News Digital.
MSNBC, in particular, did not air Trump’s full victory speech after he won the New Hampshire primary earlier this week. What they did air were snippets of the speech with live fact checks chipped in by anchor Rachel Maddow. The media outlet also completely refused to air the former president’s victory speech in Iowa, even though he had made history with his win.
CNN also walked down a similar route, as the channel’s host Jake Tapper interrupted Trump’s speech after his Tuesday victory to add his fact-checker. He did the same last week while airing the GOP frontrunner’s victory speech last week, accusing him of spewing “anti-immigrant rhetoric.”
While Maddow tried to defend the channel’s decision to skip Trump’s speech last week by explaining that airing his “untrue” statements and “lies” live on television is harmful to MSNBC’s brand, the excuse is not flying with many critics, including radio host Erick Erickson who believes the outlet is only trying to not offend its progressive audience.
“It has nothing to do with him and everything to do with your audience,” he said, also stating that not broadcasting Trump actually helps rather than hurt him.
