Multiple American news channels on Thursday, 5 November, cut away from US President Donald Trump’s address from the White House and stressed that his words needed to be fact-checked after an address riddled with false claims.
In his second post-election speech, Trump continued to make unfounded claims of voter fraud, baseless allegations that the Democrats were stealing the election and falsely declared that he had easily won if only the “legal votes” were counted.
“If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” Trump began, providing no evidence for his claim. "If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us,” he added.
Trump continued to press the need to 'stop the count' of the 'votes that came in late'.
News Channels Cut Away, Present Fact-Checks
The Guardian reported that TV news networks, including ABC, CBS and MSNBC stopped broadcasting the president’s remarks since they made unfounded claims.
News channel MSNBC cut away from Trump’s speech after he falsely declared victory, with anchor Brian Williams commenting, “Here we are again in the unusual position of not only interrupting the President of the United States but correcting the President of the United States.”
The Verge reported that ABC moved away from the address and switched to anchor David Muir, who asked reporter Jon Karl to help “discern what he’s talking about,” saying there was “a lot to fact-check.” Karl reportedly said there was “simply no evidence that’s been presented in any of these states that there are illegal votes he is talking about something, making an allegation with absolutely no evidence whatsoever.”
Meanwhile, CBS cut away to anchor Norah O’Donnell and reporter Nancy Cordes, and proceeded to fact-check the president’s baseless claims.
CNBC anchor Shepard Smith said, “We’re interrupting this because what the president of the US is saying in large part is absolutely untrue. He began and we’re not going to allow it to keep going, because it’s not true.”
Lester Holt, the anchor on NBC News reportedly said Trump had made “a number of false statements, including the notion that there has been fraudulent voting”, adding that there has been no evidence of that.”
While CNN continued to carry on the speech, the channel’s reporter Daniel Dale took to Twitter to say that this was the most dishonest speech Trump has ever given.
Meanwhile, MSNBC reporter claimed Hayes Brown claimed on Twitter that the micro-blogging platform had stopped the livestream of the speech.
The Associated Press, which has been foremost in ‘calling’ the presidential races in states, took to Twitter to fact-check Trump as well, pointing out that they had not called the presidential race overall yet, adding that “President Trump is renewing unfounded claims that Democrats are trying to ‘steal’ the election.”
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