MSNBC on Monday aired a taped Donald Trump press conference in its entirety, leaving reporters to wonder why the left-leaning cable news network gave the billionaire businessman’s already concluded remarks so much free airtime.
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“Instead of running the Trump presser live MSNBC is rerunning the entire thing on tape. Unreal,” the Washington Free Beacon’s Stephen Gutowski said on social media. “If I worked at MSNBC (lol) I’d be incredibly embarrassed by what [they’re] doing over there. The only ones airing this entire stupid presser.”
The San Francisco Chronicle’s Joe Garofoli added, “I wonder if MSNBC will offer an equal amount of commercial free time to [Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas] and [Ohio Gov. John Kasich] as they did to Trump.”
“MSNBC now giving free air time for Trump to sell his business,” said The Huffington Post’s Paul Blumenthal.
Trump’s press conference, which was held at the soon-to-be Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., saw the GOP candidate speaking mostly about his most recent business deals. He also offered a woman in the crowd a job.
At the same time that Trump spoke with reporters Monday afternoon, President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro held a historic press conference to address the cooling relationship between the two countries. MSNBC carried all of the president’s joint press conference with Castro live.
But as soon as that ended, MSNBC cut away immediately and queued up Trump’s remarks from earlier that afternoon. The cable news network then aired all of Trump’s 37-minute press conference, and didn’t break once for commercials.
For some in media, MSNBC airing all of Trump’s already-ended press conference amounted to little more than a free TV ad for the GOP candidate.
“Ok, Trump is the biggest political story of the year. But not everything he does is newsworthy. I can figure that out. Why can’t MSNBC?” asked Variety’s David Cohen.
“Let’s note that the Trump presser that MSNBC replayed was mostly about a local development project. They saw that and PLAYED IT ANYWAY,” he added.
The New York Times’ Nate Cohn said elsewhere, “The most amazing thing about this MSNBC Trump hotel ad is that it says ‘moments ago.’ Someone saw this and decided they had to air it.”
His Times colleague Margot Sanger-Katz added, “Why is MSNBC running a free Trump advertisement for his hotel project? He is currently talking about the ‘bathroom fixtures.'”
Though MSNBC was criticized Monday for giving Trump a boatload of free media, they are not the leaders when it comes to cable news coverage of the casino tycoon. That distinction goes to CNN, which has covered Trump’s White House bid more than both MSNBC and Fox News.
Collectively, newspapers, television and online news sites have given Trump nearly $2 billion in earned media — that is, news mentions in print, on television and online — according to data compiled by mediaQuant, which tracks media coverage for each candidate and calculates how much that sort of time on television would cost in advertising dollars.
