Former President Donald Trump essentially wrapped up the Republican primary with his performance on Super Tuesday. That doesn’t mean MSNBC host Rachel Maddow is willing to hear speeches from the nominee yet.
After airing a portion of Trump’s victory speech Tuesday evening, Maddow chastised producers from her own network for giving the nominee airtime.
“I will say that it is a decision that we revisit constantly in terms of the balance between allowing somebody to knowingly lie on your air about things they’ve lied about before — and you can predict they are going to lie about,” said Maddow.
“Therefore, it is irresponsible to allow them to do that. It’s a balance between knowing that that’s irresponsible to broadcast and also knowing that as the soon-to-be de facto nominee of the Republican Party, this is not only the man who is likely to be the Republican candidate for president, but this is the way he’s running.”
When pressed by fellow host Stephanie Ruhle on a plan to “fact check the hell out of him”, Rachel Maddow did not budge.
“We do that after the fact. That is the best remedy that we’ve got. It does not fix the fact that we broadcast it, honestly,” she concluded.
The MSNBC host has never been shy in her insistence that the network not air Trump’s speeches live. Last year, she argued that “there’s a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things,” alluding to the $787.5 million settlement Fox News paid Dominion Voting Systems for airing false statements about the 2020 election being “rigged” against the former president.
