Major media figures were left fuming on Friday after they played a willing role in giving Donald Trump free national airtime to promote his hotel and play up his support for veterans, while the press waited for his briefing announcement on where he thinks President Obama was born.
Trump’s campaign announced early Friday that he would be holding a press conference at his new hotel in Washington, D.C., to address his long-lasting suggestions that President Obama may not be a U.S. citizen.
Cable news channels broadcast most of the event live, but the Republican nominee did not speak about the so-called “birther” issue until the very end, and for less than a minute. The rest of it was filled with Trump promoting his hotel and featuring veterans who endorsed him for president. Trump also took no questions from press.
“Shameful, despicable, sickening and absolutely pathetic,” political commentator and TV One anchor Roland Martin said on MSNBC, reacting to the event. “But I think the headline also is media got pimped and played by Donald Trump again.
“For the last three-to-four hours he has hijacked the news cycle and what did he do? He did a 20-second statement. Look at all the free attention he got. The free media he got. So that’s what you actually got here.”
Philip Rucker, a political reporter for the Washington Post, quipped on Twitter, “Has any hotel ribbon cutting in the history of hotel ribbon cuttings received so much national media attention?”
CNN’s John King said that the media was “played again by the Trump campaign, which is what they do.”
Throughout his unusual campaign, Trump, a real estate developer and businessman, has held press conferences in which he used the attention to promote his golf courses and other Trump-branded products.
In June, he held a press conference at one of his golf courses in Scottland and spent much of it lauding it as one of the world’s best.
Maggie Haberman, a political reporter for the New York Times, likened Trump’s conference Friday to a “bait-and-switch” scheme.
Trump, however, did address the main issue at the end of the program. “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it,” he said.
“President Obama was born in the United States. Period,” he said. “Now we all want is to get back to making America strong and great again.”
