NBC was battered with criticism on Wednesday after it announced plans for a Thursday town hall event with President Trump to air opposite an already-scheduled ABC forum with his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden.
Top Democrats, media pundits, and many journalists inside NBC and MSNBC were taken aback by the network’s choice of the 8 p.m. Eastern time slot, which will make it impossible for Americans to watch both candidates live.
“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.’’
Trump and Biden were originally scheduled to face off on Thursday in Miami at a formal debate — until last week, when Trump abruptly withdrew after the Commission on Presidential Debates decided to stage the event virtually over concerns that Trump could still be contagious with the coronavirus.
Biden quickly arranged his own telecast with ABC, prompting Trump’s campaign to seek its own event that evening. After a lengthy negotiation — NBC wanted proof that the president would not pose a health risk — the network announced its plans Wednesday morning.
Several people familiar with internal discussions described the network’s thinking, requesting anonymity to share private conversations.
Trump’s town hall event was patterned after a similar Biden forum that NBC had hosted on Oct. 5, the people said. It will be held at the same outdoor Miami venue, with the same format that features questions from Florida voters — and the same 8 p.m. time slot.
But given the conflict with Biden’s event on ABC, why not simply start Trump after the former vice president finishes?
NBC officials argued internally that such a move could be problematic because many more American households watch television later in the evening. In theory, they argued, starting the event at 9 or 10 p.m. Eastern would grant Trump access to a larger potential live audience than Biden had for his NBC event.
So why not hold the event on a different night? NBC executives have insisted that the date was their choice, the people said, and that Thursday fit the president’s schedule.
It was unclear if the Trump campaign would have accommodated a request to move the event to a different day. The president is trailing in many polls and is eager for opportunities to make his case to a sizable audience. NBC’s publicists declined to comment.
Numerous staff members at NBC and MSNBC 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.’’
In 2020, many Americans prefer to watch television programs at their own pace, using DVRs and online streams. Viewers who want to see what both Biden and Trump have to say on Thursday will have plenty of options to do so.
But presidential events have a unique draw, particularly at the height of the campaign: Biden and Trump’s first debate in Cleveland last month drew 73 million viewers. Neither town hall on Thursday is likely to come close to those numbers.
Still, by scheduling Trump against Biden, NBC may end up providing the president with one of his preferred talking points: The president is almost certain to score a higher Nielsen rating than Biden, since the event will also air on NBC’s sibling cable channels, MSNBC and CNBC.
New York Times
Many Indian Americans plan to vote for Biden-Harris
CHICAGO — A large majority of Indian Americans plan to cast ballots for the Democratic ticket of former vice president Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris, according to a survey released Wednesday, despite elaborate overtures by the Trump White House to win their support.
The survey, by the polling firm YouGov, found that 72 percent of Indian American voters planned to vote for Biden, with just 22 percent planning to go for President Trump.
While Indian Americans hold a wide variety of political views, the presence on the Democratic ticket of Harris, whose mother immigrated from Chennai, India, has had a galvanizing effect on a voting bloc that could help Biden in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan.
Their potential impact on the presidential election highlights the growing importance of Indian Americans in US politics: As the second-largest immigrant group in the country, Indian Americans are gaining influence, making political donations, vocally supporting candidates and causes, and, most notably, running for office.
“We have arrived,’’ said Ramesh Kapur, a Democratic Party fund-raiser.
Kapur, 72, who owns a gas processing and distributing company in Medford, Mass., and supported Harris’s 2016 Senate race and her run for the 2020 presidential nomination, said that Indian Americans donated $3.3 million to the Biden Victory Fund at a single fund-raising event he organized in September.
But Harris isn’t the only reason many Indian Americans support the Democratic ticket this year, Kapur said. They are also turned off by the president’s frequent attacks on immigrants and people of color, despite standing to gain from Trump’s economic policies.
The apparently wide support among Indian Americans for Biden comes despite high-profile efforts by Trump and the Republicans to win their votes.
A year ago, Trump drew 50,000 people to a rally in Houston with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, an event that organizers called “Howdy, Modi.’’ The prime minister, a right-wing populist, lauded Trump’s name as “familiar to every person on the planet.’’ He returned the favor in February with an even larger spectacle for Trump in India.
New York Times
IOWA BOUND — President Trump boarded Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Wednesday, headed for a campaign rally in Des Moines.