The “Big Three” networks will snub President Trump’s Fourth of July “Salute to America” event amid criticisms that Trump is hijacking the celebration to turn the fireworks event into a political rally featuring the military.
ABC, CBS, and NBC will not cover the event, The Daily Mail reported, and will instead air their regularly scheduled programming, like Jeopardy! and “Inside Edition.”
MSNBC also said it would not cover the event while CNN has yet to comment on whether they will cover it.
Fox News will have a two-hour special for the event and it will be aired live in full on C-SPAN.
Trump gave tickets to taxpayer-funded event to political donors:
Tickets to the event, which will be paid for by taxpayers, were distributed by the White House to the Republican National Committee and Trump’s 2020 campaign, which gave them out to big money Republican donors, HuffPost reported.
Despite the tickets being free, the White House is concerned that not enough people will show up, Politico reporter Nancy Cook told MSNBC.
“Well, really what the concerns are are that there’s a question about will enough people show up,” Cook said Wednesday. “The White House and the Republican National Committee has all of these VIP seats they’ve been trying to off-load. Originally they tried to give them to a bunch of high-end donors.”
“Now I’ve been hearing even tonight, after I published this story today, that they’re really willing to off-load them to — one White House staffer that I talked to late this afternoon took home 15 tickets and was just going to hand them out to whomever she could tomorrow,” she said. “And the big concern on the part of the White House and the RNC is whether or not these seats will be filled.”
