“STRAIGHT-UP
AUTOCRATIC MALARKEY”: NETWORKS CHALLENGE TRUMP’S DANGEROUS CALL TO STOP
COUNTING VOTES
The
president prematurely declaring victory drew pushback from major TV
outlets—some of which cut away from his White House rant. “This is an extremely
flammable situation,” said Fox’s Chris Wallace, “and the president just threw a
match on it.”
BY JOE POMPEO
NOVEMBER 4, 2020
It was around 2:30 a.m. when all hell broke loose. That’s when
President Donald Trump did the unhinged, dangerous,
Democracy-destabilizing thing that we all hoped we wouldn’t have to see him do,
giving a speech at the White House in which he prematurely declared victory
even as millions upon millions of legitimate votes were still being counted.
The goal, in all of its authoritarian bluster, was to get out in front of a
result that might not land in his favor. But anyone who was still awake and glued
to their screens as the propaganda unfolded got a fast and forceful reality
check.
The networks quickly and aggressively called
bullshit on Trump’s remarks, either breaking away from
the speech or butting in with fact-checks. “We are reluctant to step in, but
duty bound to point out when he says, ‘We did win this election, we’ve already
won,’ that’s not based in the facts at all,” said MSNBC’s Brian
Williams. His colleague Nicolle Wallace put it this way:
“It’s straight-up autocratic malarkey, and what we have to keep in mind is that
he’s not the boss of the counting.”
Hours earlier, the whole vibe was a lot more
tame. At 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday evening, I was gabbing with a source at one
of the broadcast networks about the unusual complexity of how votes were being
counted, not to mention the numerous potential land mines confronting
journalists, like, say, a premature declaration of victory from the president.
How were the networks going to handle this? “I think slow and steady is going
to be the mantra for everyone,” he said. “No one wants to be the first to make
a mistake in what’s been deemed the most important election in our lifetimes.”
As the night carried on, that did seem to be
how things played out on the broadcast and cable-news channels, even if some of
the programming was a little…caffeinated at times. As my
colleague Jessica Pressler put it, “Changing the
channel from PBS to CNN is like switching from tea to meth.” There was,
after all, something anxiety-inducing in the way John King rapidly
relayed the minutiae of the network’s signature “Magic Wall,” emphasizing
teensy-tiny margins in major battleground states (“This is why this is so much
fun”), drilling down on the tallies in random counties you’ve never heard of
(“The suburban revolt and rejection of Donald Trump continues”), gaming out
potential paths to victory (“If Joe Biden flips this state
blue, Donald Trump has no path to reelection. If Joe Biden flips this
state blue, Donald Trump has no path to reelection.”)
Back in September, I had
checked in with some top network executives as they were gearing up for the
main event. They emphasized the need to remind bleary-eyed viewers that this
was no ordinary election, that there was a really good chance a winner wouldn’t
be declared by the time people finally switched off their televisions in the
wee hours. “We have to prepare our audience both in advance and throughout that
evening for the range of possible outcomes,” NBC News president Noah
Oppenheim told me. “We don’t want it to be a surprise that all these
complex dynamics are in play.”
That instinct seemed to kick into high gear
around 10:30 p.m. or so, when the anti-Trump crowd’s quixotic hopes of a blue
tsunami Biden blowout officially disappeared. As Chris Christie put
it on ABC, “The predictions that this was going to be a big Biden win are
done.” Despite all the talk, for months now, of how sticky this election could
end up being, despite all the talk of early voting and slower counting and the
different ways different states tabulate their ballots, of the potential for
protracted courtroom battles, or weeks of crushing uncertainty that could
make Bush v. Gore look like child’s play, despite all of that,
the narrative of a plausible Biden blowout had gained steamed over the past
couple of weeks. When that narrative tanked so spectacularly, TV journalists
had to quickly pull viewers back to reality.
“We need to caution our viewers out there—it’s
early. Everyone just needs to take a deep breath,” said Jake Tapper on
CNN. “I just know there are a lot of people who paid attention only to the most
Trump-hating pundits out there who were saying for weeks, if not months, that
this was going to be a landslide…. We’ve been saying for a long time that
anything can happen…. It still feels like people didn’t hear us when we were
telling them that.” A little before 11, I texted an executive at one of
the major networks for some thoughts on how they were all doing. “Well, the
people watching the networks are furious and blaming them. So depends on what
your definition of ‘doing’ is.” The mood at this executive’s network? “Mild
shock & awe mixed with, I-told-you-so.”
The true test for TV news, its Walter Cronkite
moment, came with Trump’s speech. “Frankly, we did win this election,” he declared from the
White House. He pushed unfounded “fraud” claims and called on the Supreme Court
to disrupt the democratic process. “We want all voting to stop,” he said.
On NBC, Savannah Guthrie, who
was praised for her
tough and animated Trump interview during the network’s recent town hall with
the president, set the record straight. “We’re listening to the president
speaking at the White House, but we’ve got to dip in here, because there have
been several statements that are just frankly not true,” she said. “The
president going through some of the states, stating that he has prevailed in
those states, naming Georgia, saying they’re winning Georgia—or that they won
Georgia, ‘there’s no way they’ll catch us, that they’re winning Pennsylvania,
won Michigan.’ The fact of the matter is those states have not come close to
counting all of their votes.”
CBS threw up a graphic stating, “CBS NEWS IS NOT PROJECTING A
WINNER IN THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE,” and Norah O’Donnell described
Trump as “castrating the facts.” Even Trump-friendly pundits like Rick
Santorum and Christie, who contribute to CNN and ABC, respectively,
were aghast. “I was very distressed by what I just heard the president say,”
Santorum conceded, while Christie said, “I think it’s a bad strategic decision.
It’s a bad political decision.”
But perhaps the most noteworthy analysis was
that seen on Trump’s frenemy network, Fox News, which already rankled the
president’s team earlier in the night by calling Arizona for Biden. Not that
you never hear critical things about Trump on Fox, because you
do, even if such segments usually get drowned out by its fire-breathing opinion
hosts. Either way, Fox is where MAGA fever is sky-high, both among the audience
and with loyalist prime-time anchors like Sean Hannity and Laura
Ingraham. At a historic and uncharted moment like this, it was crucial
to have a respected veteran newsman like anchor Chris Wallace telling the viewers what
they needed to hear. “This is an extremely flammable situation, and the
president just threw a match on it,” Wallace said. “He hasn’t won these states.
Nobody is saying he’s won the states. The states haven’t said that he’s won.”
The question is, did the viewers believe him?