President Trump was going to make a speech from the White House about the 2020 election, a process so unique and unprecedented that, at well past 2 in the morning eastern time, no news organization could predict who was going to be the winner. Before he got on camera, however, Norah O’Donnell had something to impart to her viewers.
“We at CBS News are not projecting in this presidential race. We will not disenfranchise the millions of voters in those battleground states and the hundreds of thousands in Georgia who also have not had their votes counted,” said O’Donnell, speaking during CBS News coverage of the election well after most viewers normally watch her on “CBS Evening News.” Moments later, as Trump spoke, anchors on NBC, MSNBC and CNBC broke into his comments — during which he falsely claimed he had won the election despite millions of votes left uncounted – – and Savannah Guthrie, Brian Williams and Shepard Smith told viewers why the president was making unfounded claims. “We’ve got to dip in here because there have been several statements that are just frankly not true,” Guthrie told NBC viewers. “We are reluctant to step in, but duty bound to point out when he says we did win this election, we’ve already won, that’s not based on the facts at all,” said Williams.
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