Tipsheet

NBC News Decided That This Would Be the Opportune Time for a Live Hit

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  July 19, 2024 11:15 AM

Thursday night's evening session brought us the final night of the Republican National Convention, during which former and potentially future President Donald Trump gave his nomination speech. Not long before, Rev. Franklin Graham gave a speech, which involved a prayer. It was a touching moment, and yet NBC News decided to do a live hit then, as the Daily Caller's Reagan Reese shared.

Anchor Savannah Guthrie acknowledged that what was taking place on the stage "in fact may be a moment of prayer, but I want to go to Garrett Haake on the floor." In other words, they knew what was going on at that moment and ought to have known better. 

As she and co-anchor Lester Holt spoke to Haake for his live hit, Guthrie didn't even ask about Graham's speech or about how he was praying, but about if he had seen Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), Trump's running mate.

Haake went on to claim it was "a little bit unusual that Vance and his wife didn't show up with the Trumps and the Trump family when it came out." 

The camera panned to Trump and Vance both bowing their heads and closing their eyes in prayer. At this point, Haake, whose voice was noticeably low, also acknowledged he had "been asked to be very quiet," gestured to where Vance and Trump were sitting. 

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Anchor Lester Holt then awkwardly acknowledged "yeah, we understand you're in a difficult spot," and they went to "break away" from Haake for the moment. 

Haake acknowledged that people had asked him to be quiet, but what isn't as clear in the clip is just how involved the delegates on the floor were. As Reese noted, "several delegates started hitting the correspondent telling him to shut up and that it wasn’t appropriate to interrupt." One delegate also asked which outlet Haake was with. 

Reese's post from Thursday night is full of replies from users taking issue with Haake's live hit, as they also applaud the delegates. 

As another user pointed out, many networks also talked over the Gold Star families who took the stage on Wednesday night to honor 13 U.S. servicemembers. Those servicemembers died as a result of the terrorist attack on August 26, 2021 in Afghanistan as part of President Joe Biden's chaotic withdrawal.

MSNBC, as Matt covered, showed particular disrespect by having DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison on to crack some jokes.