Trump event set to air opposite Biden’s
President cleared after virus test; NBC News draws criticism over scheduling
NEW YORK — NBC News agreed to host President Donald Trump as he takes questions from voters in a town hall-style event at 7 tonight, after the president submitted to an independent coronavirus test with the results reviewed by Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Network management said it was not comfortable relying solely on the word of the White House physician, Dr. Sean Conley.
The announcement Wednesday sets up dueling town hall-style events involving Trump and his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, on a night the two candidates were supposed to meet for their second debate. Biden is appearing on a similar event in Philadelphia, televised by ABC.
The move to air Trump’s event subjected NBC News to backlash on social media; a call to boycott the network was a trending topic on Twitter.
NBC said Trump would be at least 12 feet from moderator Savannah Guthrie and the audience.
Trump, who tested positive for covid-19 on Oct. 2 and spent three days at the Walter Reed military hospital, on
Tuesday took a coronavirus test administered by the National Institutes of Health, NBC said.
Both National Institutes of Health clinical director Dr. Clifford Lane and Fauci reviewed Trump’s medical records and said they had a high degree of confidence that the president is “not shedding infectious virus.” The network did not explicitly say that Trump had received a negative result from the test.
Combined with the fact that Trump was more than 10 days out from the onset of symptoms, Fauci said, “We can say with a high degree of confidence that he is not transmissible.”
Fauci said he and Lane had corresponded with Conley, who provided all of the information that they assessed. “We were just given the data, and we made a determination from the data,” Fauci said.
A formal matchup between Trump and Biden that was scheduled for tonight in Miami by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates was canceled. In light of the president’s infection, the commission shifted the format to a virtual meeting, and Trump declined to participate.
Both town hall-style events will begin at 7 p.m. CDT, but Biden will have the last word. The ABC event, moderated by George Stephanopoulos, will last 90 minutes, with an additional half hour of analysis. Trump’s event on NBC is scheduled for an hour.
Critics of NBC questioned why the network scheduled Trump for the same time, making viewers have to choose if they were interested in seeing both candidates react live in a similar format.
Veteran journalist Jeff Greenfield called it “indefensible” in a Twitter post.
“They rewarded Trump by giving him this time,” Greenfield said in an interview.
He questioned whether NBC acceded to a demand by the president, but the network said in a statement that “the Trump campaign did not dictate or request the time slot nor express any preference.”
NBC executives said that tonight fit the president’s schedule. Because of the now-canceled second debate, Trump’s evening was free. It was unclear whether the Trump campaign would have accommodated a request by NBC to move the event to a different day.
Numerous staff members at NBC and MSNBC were said to have expressed private dismay on Wednesday at their leaders’ decision. One former NBC News executive, Mark Lukasiewicz, who produced political conventions and candidate forums for the network, wrote on Twitter: “This is a bad result for American voters, who should not be forced to choose which to watch.”
NBC considered it important that Trump be given the same format, day of the week and length of time that Biden had during a televised event last week — although he will have a different moderator. Lester Holt hosted the Biden event.
According to those with knowledge of the talks, NBC officials argued internally that starting Trump’s event after Biden’s finishes could be problematic because many more American households watch television later in the evening. In theory, they argued, starting the event at 8 or 9 p.m. CDT would grant Trump access to a larger potential audience than Biden had for his NBC event on Oct. 5.
In addition to preventing viewers from getting a sideby-side comparison of the two men, the dueling events will likely be seen by far fewer people.
The first debate, held last month, was watched by an estimated 73.1 million people, the Nielsen company said.
An estimated 6.7 million people saw Biden at the NBC News-sponsored event last week. As the Trump event tonight will be, it was simulcast on MSNBC, CNBC and online.
Trump’s town hall-style event with Stephanopoulos on Sept. 15 was seen by 3.8 million people, Nielsen said.
“The point of a news organization is to serve the public,” Vivian Schiller, a former executive at NBC, Twitter and National Public Radio, wrote on Twitter. “This is the opposite.”
Tonight’s Trump event on NBC will be held outdoors at the Perez Art Museum in Miami. Audience members will be socially distanced, will be required to wear masks and must submit to temperature checks before entering the venue, NBC said.