WTF? Trump’s Rambling Policy-Free Speech Covered Live By MSNBC – Only

Donald Trump’s campaign promised that his speech today would provide details of his foreign policy agenda. The location he chose for the address was the deck of the USS Iowa battleship currently docked in San Pedro, California. But as usual, Trump arrived, greeted the crowd, and gave his standard stump speech that consisted mainly of glorifying himself and tossing out nearly incoherent, monosyllabic cliches and insults. No doubt his brain-dead fans ate it up.

What was unusual about this speech was that ordinarily all of the cable “news” networks would obediently fall in line to broadcast Trump’s irrelevance and inanity live. That didn’t happen today. Perhaps they are wising up and realizing that Trump has nothing to say and that he has been exploiting them to get free advertising.

So this day marks a milestone for media independence and journalistic discretion. Except for one thing. While CNN aired about a minute of Trump’s speech before cutting away to a panel of pundits, and Fox News ignored the speech entirely, sticking with their regularly scheduled broadcast of Bill O’Reilly, MSNBC cut away from the Rachel Maddow Show and aired Trump’s speech in full and uninterrupted. Yes, MSNBC.

MSNBC Donald Trump

Something is terribly wrong when Fox News employs a more appropriate editorial policy with regard to a Republican candidate than MSNBC. And ironically, throughout most of the segment MSNBC’s graphic read “Trump Gives Major Policy-Free Speech.” Which begs the question: Then why are you airing it? Even Trump recognized the absurdity of the constant live coverage he drew when he said in Alabama last month “Why don’t they just cover me like anybody else where they go the next day and they show little clips? Every time I speak it has to be live? It’s ridiculous.”

Indeed, why don’t they cover him like anybody else? A few weeks ago I wrote a column lambasting all three cable “news” nets for their flagrant whoring to one candidate for the ratings they expect to garnish. But now I fear I must remind the one network that ought to have known better in the first place. So MSNBC, pay attention:

“Even after Trump taunts them about how tightly they are wound around his fat finger, they still bow down to him. Even after he correctly notes that it’s ridiculous, they persist in following him around like lovesick puppies. Even though there is nothing in Trump’s stump speeches that makes them newsworthy, other than some fresh bit of noxious racism or ignorance, his arrogant mugging is carried live. His circus sideshow offers no justification for preempting regular programming to broadcast his ego-ranting as if the fate of the nation depended on it, but they do it anyway. […]

“The media should cover Trump like any other candidate. No more, no less. By arbitrarily providing live broadcasts of only his campaign speeches they are violating their professional duties by serving as the PR team for one candidate. Trump’s public appearances are pep rallies for his own aggrandizement, not news events. […]

“The live coverage needs to stop, or at least be reserved for only events that warrant it for their news value. Absent that, the networks should register as lobbyists for the candidate and be required to report their airtime as in-kind donations […] to benefit a raging demagogue whose primary appeal is that he could spontaneously combust at any moment.”

It’s impossible to say whether CNN and Fox declined to air Trump’s speech out of principle or if they just weren’t in the mood today. We will see what happens when Trump gives his next speech. But MSNBC has got to stop embarrassing themselves by demonstrating lower standards than Fox when it comes to campaign coverage.

News Corpse Presents: The ALL NEW 2nd volume of
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Advertisement:

11 thoughts on “WTF? Trump’s Rambling Policy-Free Speech Covered Live By MSNBC – Only

  1. The one interesting thing about last night was that Rachel uncovered the man behind the event..ONE GUY who pretends to front a veteran’s group that benefitted from ticket sales, but he’s ONE GUY. One man raked in thousands of dollars last night from Trump, and he does nothing for veterans but co-opt the word. Is Trump stupid? Does he owe the guy something? There is the story, not the bombast and the lies and the self-aggrandizing stunts. But who is behind the curtain pulling the strings. I couldn’t help but wonder why the guy running MSNBC, who is a former Fox guy, wants to bring the network down, because that is what he is doing. Ruining the brand. Firing people who matter. and ticking off the few remaining viewers.

    • That story by Maddow about the scam vets group was great. It’s typical of the right-wing network of grifters.

      • Nice generalization – are all right wingers swindlers? Or are all swindlers exclusively right wingers? I guess this will be another example of hypocrisy I’ll get to throw in your face some day when i make a generalization of some group – the last one I got called on was violent extremist christians vs. islamic extremists in response to an article of yours. Of course I’m man enough to acknowledge my comment, unlike others…What a screwed up view of the world you have.

        • hi propaganda victim.
          what issue in the last decade do you think the right wing has represented accurately?

          I can think of zero cases where right wing media has been truthful.

  2. MSNBC can’t stop covering every move that Trump makes for the same reason people can’t take their eyes off a train wreck.

  3. MSNBC is on the downslide. At one time they were the voice for reason that stood against the right wing noise machine. Now, apparently they’re on a course to becoming the newest version of FUX NOISE. I was stupid enough to believe that MSNBC had any thought to being the ANTI-FOX, and actually be motivated by de-bunking the non-stop stream of BULLSHIT. Man, was I wrong, … foolish me! It’s all about ratings (GREED) and ad revenue (MORE GREED)! MSNBC seems to be changing it’s focus of being an honest, political news outlet. BULLSHIT and LIES and SENSATIONALISM apparently are money makers. it appears that MSNBC will continue to slowly deteriorate into another source of right-wing propaganda, so they can tap into FUX’S money stream, and FUCK THE TRUTH!! Capitalistic greed is destroying this country! It looks like MSNBC has chosen the low road and has decided to chuck any class they might have shown in the past, and deteriorate into “The Donald Trump Clown Show”. And, then there are the days that have a shooting of some kind. MSNBC devotes an entire evening, 5 one-hour shows, reporting on that one story, … like all the other news suddenly became unimportant, and subject their audience (the few that hang around, anyway), to an ever repeating line-up of guest commentators, that show up on each show, … all saying the same things to 5 different MSNBC hosts, … for 5 fucking hours!! Hey MSNBC, … If I wanted to watch an entire evening of repeating nonsensical BULLSHIT, I could just tune into TMZ, … or the kings of BULLSHIT, PROPOGANDA, and LIES, …. FUX NOISE!!! Good luck MSNBC, you’re gonna need it, … because FOX is so good at PROPOGANDA and RIGHT-WING LIES, they’re gonna eat you alive!

  4. That’s easy, Maddow did a terrific “Take-down” on both it, and the guy who benefited from it. The guy was celebrated by Trump because his “organization” (consisting of himself-and with $30 in the Bank Account and $300 in debt) came to Trumps defense when he made those cracks about McCain (giving the impression that he had the support of a “Veterans Group”, all one of them).

    It was supposed to be a Foreign Policy event (but it contained zero Foreign Policy items.

  5. This was part of NBC’s settlement with Trump.

  6. Oh Mark, you expect way too much from MSNBC. I think they should broadcast all of The Donald’s blusterfests… but, they should give him the “respect” due him; maybe add a laugh-track like all the old TV sitcoms! Not that reasonable people need to be told when to laugh at Trump, but it would serve to lighten the mood. Since it is difficult to actually look at the guy for such a long stretch, they should cut away from time to time with some amusing bits to sort of illustrate Trump’s message; like LOL-cats jumping in & out of boxes, monkeys washing dogs, Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes, etc… Now that’s infotainment!

  7. Trump is really bringing out the ick in most people at MSNBC, but just for a little different context here – the speech occurred during Maddow’s show. She prefaced the speech with a bit of an expose on the speech, namely that it was a fundraiser for a PAC that seems to consist of just one guy with a pretty shady political past. It wasn’t even a fundraiser for Trump’s campaign. In the middle of this bombshell, Trump’s speech began so again, since Maddow was just talking about it, they carried it live, then followed up with the rest of the expose on this one-man band (with Maddow saying something along the lines of “How is everyone else burying the lede on this?”), as well as the fact that the speech was completely void of the “foreign policy” substance the media were told would be discussed in more depth than ever before. It would behoove you to seek out Maddow’s show, listen to her beginning, then skip Trump’s speech and get back to her explanation.

Comments are closed.