Super Tuesday TV Coverage: Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC All Over the Map
Donald Trump, riding a wave of victories on Super Tuesday evening, said during a victory speech-cum-press-conference held within the gilded palace of his Mar-a-Lago estate, “I’m watching the people on CNN. I’m watching Fox News, and I’m watching MSNBC. See? I’m becoming diplomatic. And they’re all saying very nice things about me.” He was correct, for the most part: The three main cable news outlets had to concede to Trump faster than Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio did.
On CNN, Anderson Cooper and a fleet a commentators did pretzel twists to come to terms with Trump wins in a majority of the night’s primary states. On Fox, anchors Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier discussed the implications of Trump’s wins with acuity and some humor. Of Trump, Kelly opined, “He doesn’t look like these guys [i.e., Rubio and Cruz], he doesn’t sound like these guys — there’s an authenticity to him for voters who want something different.” On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow and Brian Williams rolled out the state-by-state tallies with smooth efficiency, with that network benefiting once again from Maddow’s extensive knowledge of delegate computation. All three networks kept their American maps prominent at all times, though I felt sorry for the one on CNN, which had to listen to Wolf Blitzer drone monotonously over it all night.
At shortly before 9 p.m., Hillary addressed her troops. CNN and MSNBC went full-screen with Hillary, while Fox kept a split-screen in place, half the frame showing an empty podium almost quivering in anticipation of Trump’s entry.
Apparently desperate to keep Fox News viewers from having to hear Clinton’s words, the network cut to Rubio in his Miami campaign headquarters to celebrate… what, exactly? Mostly third- and a few second-places at that point in the evening. “This does not look like a good night at all for Marco Rubio,” said Bret Baier as soon as the speech aired. So why cut to him while Clinton, a winner, was still speaking?
For phrase-making and friction, I’d have to hand the night to CNN. Jake Tapper referred to Trump as “a brash man from Queens, New York” — an excellent rhetorical opposite “short-fingered vulgarian,” the now-widely-revived Spy magazine Trump label. And an intense discussion broke out between CNN commentators Van Jones and Jeffrey Lord over Trump’s lax way with a condemnation of a Ku Klux Klan endorsement. Jones insisted that Lord recognize that the KKK is a domestic terrorist organization, while Lord preferred to split hairs and compare the KKK to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “Reverend Wright never lynched people!” said Jones vehemently, advising Lord not to “play word games.”
At 10 p.m., the networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — finally decided that the shifting sands of presidential politics might be more important than NCIS: New Orleans or Marvel’s Agent Carter and came on the air for an hour of coverage. Of these, CBS had the edge, what with Scott Pelley aided by articulate observers such as Charlie Rose, Norah O’Donnell, and commentator Peggy Noonan, the latter likely the only person on the air this night to use the word “donnybrook” in describing the political race.
Speaking of donnybrooks, you could not locate one in nearly anything Trump said in his speech — an unusual turn of events. Cannily timing his speech at 10 p.m. so that he dominated network and cable coverage, Trump used terms we haven’t heard him assert often. “I am a unifier,” the divisive candidate said. “I’ll be more inclusive … After this, I am going after one person: Hillary Clinton.”
The TV news outlets generally spoke approvingly of Trump’s performance afterward. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton didn’t fare quite as well. After her speech, Megyn Kelly read some of Clinton’s key lines, and when she got to Clinton’s phrase “what we need is more love and tenderness,” Fox’s digital politics editor, Chris Stirewalt, could be heard snickering derisively. Well, even that snarkiness is more interesting and revealing than NCIS: New Orleans.
