MSNBC host Rachel Maddow announced live on-air on Monday that she would not cut to President Donald Trump's victory speech in the Iowa caucuses, explaining: "There is a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things."
It's a line Maddow has repeatedly used before to justify blackballing Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
"We are here to bring you the news," Maddow claimed in June, as Trump was addressing his first federal indictment. "It hurts our ability to do that if we live-broadcast what we fully expect in advance to be a litany of lies and false accusations—no matter who says them."
But Maddow's suggestion that MSNBC eschews falsehoods is itself untrue. She and her network have repeatedly broadcast lies and false accusations as news, in many cases about Trump.
For example, MSNBC effectively endorsed claims that Jussie Smollett was the victim of a MAGA hate crime, COVID-19 vaccines prevent transmission, the "lab leak" theory of COVID-19 was debunked, Trump colluded with Russia to win the presidency, the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop were Russian "disinformation," and President Joe Biden had no involvement in his son's corrupt foreign business dealings.
"It is not out of spite," Maddow assured viewers on Monday of MSNBC's decision to skip Trump's victory speech.