TV networks boycott Trump's address to nation on election integrity, interference by China

President Trump delivering a prime-time speech on election integrity.

Major broadcast and cable news TV networks boycotted President Trump's prime-time address to the nation Thursday night in which he revealed to the American people the extent of China's efforts to meddle in American elections, voting vulnerabilities and appealed to members of the Senate to pass the SAVE Act.

Broadcast networks ABC and NBC refused to air Trump's address, opting to not pre-empt regularly-scheduled programming. CBS did air the speech live, with anchor Tony Dokoupil saying "it's our job to cover the news." But the Tiffany Network ended its coverage of the president's roughly 25-minute speech early, according to The New York Post. CNN also refused to air the speech, instead showing a panel of Trump critics who spent considerable time discrediting the president.

Trump addressed the media blackout in his remarks Thursday night saying the networks censored the speech "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." The president added, "Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses," a reference to the fact that the broadcast television networks essentially receive their licenses for free.

During the speech, Trump revealed that China has been able to steal the voter registration of 220 million Americans, an enormous swathe of the electorate, and has been able to obtain information like people's names, phone numbers, addresses, and political party affiliation. He said China began efforts to influence U.S. elections as early as 2020, and accused members of his first administration of preventing intelligence on China's nefarious activities from appearing in his presidential daily briefing. 

“Members of the deep state – a very,very famous group of people – in many cases in our intelligence agencies, worked to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China’s sinister election meddling, covering it up from both the president and the American people like nobody thought was possible,” Trump said. 

Trump also addressed voter fraud, saying the Department of Homeland Security has uncovered evidence showing 278,000 non-citizens have managed to register to vote. He said that since some states don't share voter roll data with the federal government, the true number is likely higher. He did stop short of saying those non-citizens had cast a vote in any federal elections. 

The Trump administration then posted the evidence it says proves these claims and others made by the president in the prime-time address. Any American can visit the White House website and download the documents on an "election integrity" page.

Trump also used the occasion to appeal to Senate Republicans to pass the SAVE Act, which contains voter ID measures and would put stricter limits on mail-in voting in a bid to shore up election security. Democrats roundly oppose passage of the SAVE Act, denouncing it as a voter suppression tactic despite the fact that polls show 80% of Americans believe the U.S. should implement voter ID measures. Meanwhile, the bill has failed to gain the support of enough Republicans, and the measure failed to win even 50 votes when it was brought up for a vote in the Senate in early June.

"Every American, whether you're a Republican, Democrat, independent or otherwise, should be able to agree that we deserve the most secure, honest, and fair election system anywhere in the world," Trump said near the end of his address. "Secure elections should be a partisan — really, should just, we should be together Democrats, Republicans, independents, everybody, and it should not be a partisan issue. It should cause to unite us, not to divide us."

Watch Trump's full speech below.