The White House Needs Better Messaging Though

The President's prime time address to the nation tonight on immigration?  The networks aren't carrying it, because In The Tank For Democrats or something.

The White House is exasperated with the major broadcast networks – ABC, CBS and NBC -- for skipping out on President Barack Obama’s Thursday primetime address on his executive actions on immigration.

“In 2006, Bush gave a 17 minute speech that was televised by all three networks that was about deploying 6000 national guard troops to the border. Obama is making a 10 minute speech that will have a vastly greater impact on the issue. And none of the networks are doing it. We can’t believe they were aggrieved that we announced this on Facebook,” a senior administration official told POLITICO.

When the president wants to make a primetime address, White House officials will reach out to the big networks like ABC, NBC, and CBS, to gauge whether they would consider running the speech live before putting in a formal request for airtime.

But on Wednesday morning, with plans underway for a Thursday night address on Obama’s plans to issue executive actions on some of the most sweeping immigration reform in decades, those feelers came back with a negative report. None of the major networks wanted to take time away from their primetime programming for Obama’s 8p.m. speech. So the administration did not send out a formal request to the networks and took to Facebook to publicize the speech with a special video message from Obama along with a link to the livestream.

You know who is showing the speech live?  Telemundo and Univision.  And this isn't the first time the networks have told this President that they refuse to carry his speech, either. 

But you'd better believe the networks will be full of Republicans reacting angrily to the speech tonight.  Hard to get your message across to the people when the networks refuse to broadcast it.

Maybe this White House will finally learn to go around them.