TV Networks Plot Ultimate Humiliation for Trump

Media admin July 16, 2026 0 Comments

Cable news channels and broadcast networks have yet to confirm whether they will air President Donald Trump’s upcoming address to the nation on Thursday evening.

The president is expected to discuss new intelligence reports that foreign countries somehow corrupted the 2020 election, which he lost but has been obsessing over for nearly six years now. Trump has claimed repeatedly, and falsely, that the election was stolen from him due to irregularities, which his legal team at the time could never prove in court nor present to the public.

The three major broadcast networks, ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News, and major cable news channels including Fox News, CNN, and MS NOW, have not responded to the Daily Beast’s repeated inquiries about their programming, even just hours ahead of the president’s expected address.

The Thursday 9 p.m. time slot still shows regularly scheduled programs, not the president’s address, across all mentioned networks and channels. So far, the only channel that appears to have changed its Thursday evening programming to air Trump’s address is the far-right Newsmax.

CBS News is reportedly considering “a middle-ground approach,” CNN media analyst Brian Stelter reported. In that case, CBS is planning to air a special report with CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupilreporting on what the president said, while fact-checking his address.

CBS is planning to air the speech live on its free streaming news channel and on social media, according to CNN.

Fox’s free live streaming platform, Fox Live Now, appears to have changed its programming. On Wednesday, the schedule said it would air the president’s address at 9 p.m., but by Thursday morning, the programming had changed to what is typically scheduled for that hour.

It remains unclear if the White House has even asked the networks to preempt their regular programming to air the president’s remarks, a request the White House typically makes for a “national address” from the president.

The White House has not responded to the Daily Beast’s repeated inquiries about whether such a speech has been made.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has been vague about networks’ scheduling, simply saying online, “Tomorrow night. 9PM. Tune in.”

The press secretary has also asserted that because the exact contents are unknown, more people will want to watch, saying, “Nobody knows yet what President Trump will ultimately say, which is why everyone should tune in.”

Trump is expected to rehash his many grievances with his 2020 election loss, after nearly six years of claiming that Joe Biden’s win was fraudulent. No such evidence exists to support those claims.

In the Oval Office earlier this week, Trump confirmed that he would be discussing his version of “free and fair elections” in his primetime address.

“It doesn’t get bigger, because without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country,” the president proclaimed. “We’ll be discussing other things too, but it’s going to be a very big announcement.”

Fox News, which has not answered the Daily Beast’s repeated inquiries about its programming, still shows Hannity, its weeknight primetime show hosted by Trump ally Sean Hannity, in the 9 p.m. slot.

The conservative cable channel was forced to pay $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems for constantly promoting Trump flacks onto their network who repeatedly lied about the election.

Like Fox, the right-wing One America News Networkwas forced to pay an undisclosed sum to voting technology company Smartmatic over its bogus claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. OANN still has The Matt Gaetz Show, hosted by the scandalous former House Republican, in the 9 p.m. timeslot.

The FCC, led by Chairman Brendan Carr, is investigating the parent companies of ABC and NBC following pressure from the Trump White House.

At the same time, two of the noncommittal networks, ABC and CBS, have also paid the president millions of dollars after he sued them.

In 2024, ABC News paid $15 million to Trump after Trump sued the network over Good Morning America anchor George Stephanopoulos saying Trump was found liable for “rape,” when the jury had actually found him liable for “sexual abuse.”

Last year, CBS News settled Trump’s lawsuit for $16 million, after Trump claimed a 60 Minutes interview with his opponent in the 2024 election, former Vice President Kamala Harris, was deceptively edited. At the time that was settled, CBS’s parent company, Paramount, was seeking regulatory approval from the Trump administration in its $8 billion merger with Skydance Media.

Still, it is not exactly uncommon for networks to refuse to change their programming to air a presidential address—especially when partisan politics are involved.

Both Joe Biden and Barack Obama each saw one of their national addresses not aired live on ABC, CBS, or NBC, as the networks deemed the contents of their speeches too political and not newsworthy for uninterrupted live coverage.