The reviews came in. Trump proclaimed his big speech to be a huge hit, “Great reviews on speech last night. Big audience.” Fox News made no mention of the speech whatsoever during its three hours of broadcasting the following morning, after announcing immediately after the speech that they were unable to independently verify the truthfulness of anything Trump said. Pretty much everyone else was far less kind, ranging from debunking the lies to calling it typical Trump delusional unproven garbage.

But what really angered Trump was that no network carried the speech in its entirety, and two networks, ABC and NBC, didn’t carry it at all. How dare they not broadcast the president’s very important speech. When Trump talks, it’s their duty to air it, or else.

President Donald Trump said TV networks that did not feature live coverage of his primetime address on election security should have their broadcast licenses revoked.

CNN, ABC and NBC opted against live coverage of the speech in which Trump claimed China illegally accessed millions of voter files as part of a broader effort to manipulate U.S. elections in 2018 and 2020.

Other outlets, including CBS, MS NOW and Fox News, chose to broadcast the speech at least in part. NBC and ABC aired Trump’s remarks on their streaming channels.

The speech was “tickled” in advance, both to make it appear that it was going to be very important and to reveal that the crux of the very important speech was about the 2020 election, which surprised no one.

“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,” he said. “Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses.”

In Trump’s mind, it wasn’t just insulting to refuse to broadcast him when noise emitted from his mouth. It was “fraud.”

TV networks are not required to air presidential remarks in primetime. Past presidents have traditionally reserved such major addresses for national crises or critical moments. Outlets have traditionally provided live coverage, but there have been exceptions.

On the networks’ part, there was no good reason to air Trump spewing more of his self-obsessed election fraud nonsense, a subject that manages to find its way into pretty much every Trump speech and presser. On Trump’s part, the networks failed to broadcast his speech so that the American public would be denied Trump’s brilliance and the knowledge that the elections were rigged, as if he hadn’t said it enough already.

This was intolerable to Trump, whose loyal FCC chair, Brendan Carr, has happily threatened to revoke network broadcast licenses throughout the second term in order to bully networks into being more Trump-friendly and serving as a mouthpiece for the administration.

Trump has previously floated revoking the broadcast licenses of TV networks whose news coverage he views as unfavorable. He suggested ABC should lose its license after late night host Jimmy Kimmel was suspended in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death. And in a social media post in December, he argued that networks that are “almost 100% negative” in their coverage should have their broadcast licenses “terminated.”

But Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr is limited in his authority to unilaterally revoke the licenses of the broadcast networks, which are protected both by the Communications Act’s restrictions on how the FCC reviews licenses and by the First Amendment.

CBS, now under the thumb of Trump-friendly Larry Ellison and his nepo baby, David, and Bari Weiss, chose to broadcast some of the speech, even though it didn’t air the half hour speech in its entirety because it was unmitigated Trumpian nonsense.

Before tuning into Trump’s speech, CBS anchor Tony Dokoupil explained why the network was airing it: “Much of what the President has said on [security of American elections] has been false.”

“There is an argument that it’s irresponsible to air the president’s speech tonight. But this speech will be made. It will be news. And it’s our job to cover the news,” Dokoupil said.

Was it “fraud,” or perhaps even treason, another of Trump’s favorite claims, to refuse to be a soapbox for Trump to spew his baseless delusions? Given that there was nothing proffered that wasn’t already known, and known to Trump during his first term, the speech was seen by many commentators as a prelude to creating sufficient distrust in elections to justify Trump taking actions to strip states of their constitutionally authorized control over elections and try to dictate to states that they be controlled by the federal government.

Indeed, the day after saw DHS Secretary and high school graduate Markwayne Mullin threaten election officials to do as they’re told or go to prison.

Markwayne Mullin says he’s making “mandatory” changes to elections, including requiring states to “scrub” their voter rolls pic.twitter.com/p5aRegbgaI

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 17, 2026

It appears that the speech may have been more important, and more newsworthy, than either ABC or NBC realized, although not for the reason Trump believed. Rather, the speech signaled Trump’s start to the undermining of the public trust in elections so that Trump can take over and pretend that there can’t be “free and fair” elections except under his control. He may well have been right that a fraud was taking place, but not by ABC or NBC.