The Trump campaign accused mainstream television networks Friday of censoring a campaign ad celebrating the achievements of President Trump’s first 100 days in office and referring to some of the media as “fake news.”
Campaign officials said CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC have refused to air the ad.
“Apparently, the mainstream media are champions of the First Amendment only when it serves their own political views,” said Lara Trump, daughter-in-law of the president and a consultant to Donald J. Trump for President Inc. “Faced with an ad that doesn’t fit their biased narrative, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC have now all chosen to block our ad. This is an unprecedented act of censorship in America that should concern every freedom-loving citizen.”
The campaign said the networks are “setting a chilling precedent against free speech rights.”
CNN said in a statement that it requested that the campaign remove a “false graphic” in the ad that calls the mainstream media “fake news.”
“The mainstream media is not fake news, and therefore the ad is false,” the network said. “Per our policy, it will be excepted only if the graphic is deleted. Those are the facts.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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