Is nightly "Trump Tower Live" the beginning of Trump TV?
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign on Monday night launched a nightly show on Facebook in an effort to circumvent what they consider the “dishonest media.”
The program, which was available to watch on Trump’s Facebook page, ran for about 30 minutes from the Trump campaign “war room” in New York and then transitioned into the GOP presidential nominee’s rally in Tampa, Florida.
Senior adviser Boris Epshteyn, adviser Cliff Sims and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway kicked off the beginning of the first show, which went live at 6:30 p.m. ET when the major networks air their nightly news programs.
“We’re gonna each night come to you about 6:30 from the Trump campaign war room,” said Sims, who said that it’s part of an effort by the campaign so that supporters “don’t have to take it through the media filter and all the spin that they put on it.”
The show had some elements of a news program like a news ticker at the bottom of the screen and different guests, but the content was pure punditry and not neutral storytelling by any means.
They discussed a report about Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s political action committee donating nearly $500,000 to the election campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe--the wife of an FBI official who helped oversee the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state.
Epshteyn said McAuliffe has had “a long history of questionable decisions” and Conway later said that Clinton has waged this campaign “as the politics of personal destruction.”
Later in the show, they interviewed Tomi Lahren of conservative outlet TheBlaze as well as Sean Spicer, the chief strategist and communications director at the Republican National Committee.
The decision to do the show comes after multiple reports about Trump’s advisers and campaign aides exploring the idea of launching a video-based media company after the election
At a campaign rally Monday afternoon in St. Augustine, Florida, Trump called the media “thieves and crooks” and claimed that, “Without the dishonesty and deceit of the media, Hillary Clinton would be nothing.”
CBS News’ Sopan Deb contributed to this report.
