CNN aired about six minutes of President Donald Trump’s big campaign kickoff rally from Orlando, Florida on Tuesday night before cutting away and moving on to analysis of the event and other news. The move appeared to be prompted by a chant of “CNN sucks!” that broke out in the crowd after Trump called his 2016 election a “defining moment in American history” and pointed to the media, adding, “Ask them right there.”
“By the way, that is a lot of fake news back there,” Trump said after the chant had died down, going off on a bizarre riff in which he compared the press to the Academy Awards “before it went political and their ratings went down the tubes.”
CNN anchor John Berman recapped the early moments of the rally by saying, “Within two minutes he did talk about the economy, but within four minutes it was attacks on the media. He was talking about a bright rosy future, but then quickly reverted to some of the same themes he’s talked about since he began running four years ago today.”
