Report: 95% of Major Network Coverage of Trump Was Negative After Second Assassination Attempt
Establishment media coverage of former President Donald Trump was found to be 95 percent negative following the second attempt on his life, according to a Media Research Center (MRC) analysis.
ABC, CBS, and NBC News all broadcasted overwhelmingly negative commentary on the Republican presidential candidate after Sunday’s thwarted shooting at the Trump International Golf Course in Florida, MRC found.
“A look at the first 72 hours of coverage on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts — Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights — finds that while the attempted assassination dominated campaign coverage, these networks’ anti-Trump spin was nearly as bad as it could be: 95 percent negative, vs. just five percent positive,” wrote MRC contributing editor Rich Noyes.
While the attempted assassination allegedly perpetrated by 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh made up 70 percent of campaign news airtime at all three networks, 20 out of the 21 evaluative comments reviewed by the center were negative towards Trump.
After Secret Service agents thwarted Routh’s by shooting at him as he allegedly waited to get a shot at Trump, he said that “communist left rhetoric” was to blame:
Over on NBC, Lester Holt related the “apparent” assassination attempt to Trump’s “rhetoric” just hours after the would-be gunman was taken into custody:
“Today’s apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail itself. Mr. Trump [and] his running mate JD Vance continued to make baseless claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio,” the anchor said.
During CBS’s Monday night broadcast, Norah O’Donnell fired back at Trump’s claim that leftist rhetoric is what fanned the flames of violence against him:
“Donald Trump is blaming Democrats for inflaming political rhetoric, but the former president’s own words seem to be increasing the threat of political violence in Springfield, Ohio,” she said. “That’s where a false and ugly accusation against Haitians, thousands of whom are legal permanent residents, is impacting everyday life.”
In a similar vein, NBC reporter Garrett Haake argued that Trump “has also used incendiary language against Democrats”:
“These networks gave relatively little time to the accusation that these attempted shootings might have been influenced by Democratic rhetoric painting Trump as an existential threat,” MRC said.
“Out of 48 minutes of coverage of the attempted shooting, the three networks spent less than two minutes (1 minute, 53 seconds) on the possibility that Democrats could share the blame.”
The latest attempt on the former president’s life comes just two months after Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, allegedly shot and killed one Butler, Pennsylvania, rally goer and seriously wounded two while trying to kill Trump, who was struck in the ear by a bullet.
