President Donald Trump offered a rare spot of praise for CNN on Tuesday, thanking one of his favorite media targets for covering the bulk Republican National Convention’s opening night and in doing so implicitly smacking Fox News for carrying only portions of the convention live.
“Very appreciative that @CNN covered the vast majority of the Republican Convention last night,” Trump wrote in a tweet, proclaiming that the cable network’s programming decision “was really good for CNN, while at the same time being good for our Country.”
Fox News, whose prime-time lineup is consistently a ratings leader, largely kept its usual programming on the first night of the convention, cutting in occasionally for certain speeches, as it did for the first night of the Democratic convention. That’s in contrast with networks like CNN and MSNBC, which both aired their own special coverage and occasionally cut out of the convention only for analysis and commercials.
All three networks’ coverage of the Republican convention, at least on Night One on Monday, was nearly identical to their coverage of the Democratic National Convention last week.
Despite keeping its prime-time programming in place, host Sean Hannity began his show on Monday night with a swipe at his cable rivals and pledged coverage of “a lot” of the festivities, while teasing impending remarks from the president.
“We just received a 10-minute warning that the president of the United States, he will be making remarks and an appearance and be speaking. When that happens, we will bring it to you. We’ll also bring you a lot of the convention, we’ll get to that in mere moments,” Hannity said, adding: “The mob, the media, they won’t be covering large parts of the RNC that we’ll be showing.”
Hannity, like his lead-in host, Tucker Carlson, continued to dip in and out of speeches. Hannity even cut away from his former coworker at Fox Kimberly Guilfoyle, in the middle of her impassioned speech about the president.
While Trump didn’t explicitly mention Fox, the network, which Trump watches constantly and whose coverage he is quick to slam when it’s not deemed favorable enough to him, others in the president’s circle were more open in their disdain for the network.
“Can’t believe I have to watch the convention on @CNN. Unbelievable,” tweeted Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager and now senior adviser, tagging Fox in the tweet.
Parscale’s replacement as campaign manager, however, shrugged the snub off.
“There was wall to wall coverage on various networks, you know, plenty of coverage to be found,” Bill Stepien told “Plug in with Playbook.”
“I’m sure Fox’ll be taking more of the coverage” going forward, he added, “as our program keeps getting better, stronger and more interesting with every night.”
