Following the second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, mainstream media coverage of him was 95 percent negative, according to an analysis by the Media Research Center (MRC).
ABC, CBS and NBC News aired overwhelmingly negative commentary about the Republican presidential nominee following Sunday's thwarted mass shooting at Florida's Trump International Golf Course, MRC reported. Found.
“Looking at coverage of the first 72 hours on ABC, CBS and NBC's evening newscasts on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday nights, while the assassination attempt dominated coverage of the election campaign, the networks' anti-Trump coverage was nearly abysmal: 95 percent negative coverage and just 5 percent positive,” MRC contributing editor Rich Noyes wrote.
The assassination attempt, allegedly perpetrated by a 58-year-old man, Ryan Wesley Routh Although election news took up 70 percent of airtime on all three networks, 20 of the 21 ratings comments the center reviewed were negative about Trump.
After Secret Service agents shot and thwarted Routh from allegedly trying to shoot Trump, said “Left-wing Communist rhetoric” is to blame:
NBC's Lester Holt linked the “apparent” assassination attempt to President Trump's “comments” just hours after the shooter was taken into custody.
“Today's assassination attempt comes at a time when the election campaign itself is becoming increasingly intense. Mr. Trump [and] “His running mate, J.D. Vance, continued to make unfounded claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio,” the anchor said.
On CBS's Monday night broadcast, Norah O'Donnell pushed back against Trump's claim that left-wing rhetoric is fanning the flames of violence against him.
“While Donald Trump accuses Democrats of inciting political rhetoric, it appears the former president's own words have heightened threats of political violence in Springfield, Ohio,” she said, “where false and ugly accusations against Haitians, thousands of whom are legal permanent residents, are impacting their daily lives.”
Similarly, NBC reporter Garrett Haacke argued that Trump has “also used inflammatory language against Democrats.”
“These networks were relatively slow to accuse these attempted shootings of possibly being influenced by Democratic rhetoric portraying Trump as an existential threat,” MRC said.
“Of the 48 minutes of coverage of the attempted shooting, the three networks spent less than two minutes (1 minute 53 seconds) reporting on the possibility that Democrats may also be responsible.”
The assassination attempt on the former president came just two months after suspect Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, shot himself in the ear in an attempt to kill Trump, killing one rally-goer and seriously wounding two others in Butler, Pennsylvania.
