Herr Trump Threatens to Muzzle the Free Press in His Unhinged Infomercial for Voter Suppression

The most media adverse president in American history, Donald Trump, lived down to his reputation for despising the free press – and the Constitution that protects it – in an entirely predictable half hour harangue on Thursday night. As if on automatic, Trump praised himself, disparaged his foes, and lied repeatedly.

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Donald Trump and Media - ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, FOX

Trump’s hopes for capturing the attention of America were dashed by most news networks recognizing the total absence of newsworthiness, and the political nature of his tirade. So NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and MS NOW chose not to air Trump’s speech live, but offered it on their streaming platforms. The Fox broadcast channel and Fox News on cable were the only national networks that aired the speech in full live. Which must have been a huge disappointment for the Trump regime who expected more just because…

SEE THIS: Karoline Leavitt: Everyone Should Watch Trump’s Speech Because Nobody Knows What He’ll Say

The media acting responsibly Thursday night is precisely why Trump hates them so virulently. And it perturbed him so much that he even addressed it in the speech…

“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. They and others in the media are 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, multibillion dollar in value airways for absolutely no money. They pay nothing.”

Trump: "NBC and ABC fake news both said that they would not cover this speech…because of the fact they do not like the topic because they know how corrupt our system is… They and others in the media are part of a plot…Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses."

The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2026-07-17T01:30:18.184Z

First of all, while it is relatively rare to decline a presidential request for airtime, it is not unprecedented. Presidents Obama and Biden also had time requests refused. But that didn’t cause them to whine petulantly that it was a plot against them, or that the media wanted to protect a corrupt system. Nor did it result in hostile threats to revoke the broadcast licenses of the networks that failed to obey Dear Leader.

It’s interesting that in his speech Trump only criticized and threatened ABC and NBC specifically. CBS, which is now owned by Trump-friendly billionaires David and Larry Ellison, didn’t air the whole speech either, but for some reason their license wasn’t threatened. And by the way, national broadcast networks don’t actually have federal licenses to revoke. So once again, Trump doesn’t have the slightest idea what he’s talking about.

The rambling and self-serving dishonesty of the rest of Trump’s speech (here on YouTube, for those with strong stomachs) justified the networks’ decisions to pass on it. It took Trump five minutes to stumble through lies about his alleged “accomplishments” before he got to the promised topic of the speech: election integrity. Then he devoted the next 20 minutes to lying about having released documents that supposedly prove his election conspiracy theories. They don’t.

Most of those documents, that he described as “brand new and irrefutable” are neither. And they don’t contain any verifiable information not previously known. He even accused his own staffers of withholding intelligence data from him in his intel briefings about China’s alleged efforts to disrupt U.S. elections.

Arguably the worst thing that Trump claims to have “discovered” is a couple hundred thousand voter registrations, out of hundreds of millions, by non-citizens. But he didn’t identify a single incident of any non-citizen who actually voted. And even those registration numbers are wildly inflated by immigrants who properly registered after becoming citizens, but whose records weren’t up to date in the federal study that Trump cited.

In the last three minutes of the speech Trump finally got around to what is his real objective, which is to undermine confidence in U.S. elections and to pass his so-called “Save America Act” (aka Voter Suppression Act). He made an impotent demand that it be passed by the GOP-controlled Senate, that doesn’t have the votes even among their own party. Trump insisted that the bill is imperative to prevent cheating by Democrats. But he also said that the Democrats’ “policies are so bad” and that their “candidates are so pathetic,” that it makes you wonder why he and the Republicans can’t just beat them at the ballot box.

Trump closed by asking viewers to call their senators to demand that they vote for the Voter Suppression bill. Which affirms that the sole purpose of this speech was to serve as a long, meandering, lie-riddled, infomercial for Trump to convince Americans that our elections are irredeemably corrupt, so that he can corrupt future elections. And on Friday morning he posted a comment on his dedicated propaganda platform, Truth Social, that sums up his deceitfulness, saying

“Great reviews on speech last night. Big audience. Pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT!!!”

For the record, the reviews by non-MAGA media were uniformly terrible. Even many reviews by MAGA-tists were decidedly negative due to his focus on phony election issues, rather than what matters most to the American people, such as the high costs of living, and the war in Iran.

As for his claim of having a “big audience,” well that’s just another lie. He couldn’t possibly know since the ratings will not be released for a couple of days. And the expectations are for low numbers considering all the networks that ignored it. But Trump’s fantasies will always take precedence over reality. And his small and shrinking cult will obediently concur.

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