ABC and NBC stations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting ended up airing President Donald Trump's primetime address on Thursday night, despite ABC News and NBC News initially saying they would only stream the speech online rather than broadcast it on their linear networks. Sinclair used its own White House feed and preempted network programming to carry the roughly 25-minute address via its National News Desk service, highlighting tensions between the president and major broadcasters over coverage of his unsubstantiated election fraud claims.

The speech, delivered at 9pm ET, focused mainly on elections, with Trump repeating claims that China obtained voter registration data and that the "deep state" withheld related intelligence from him. During the address, he accused ABC and NBC of perpetuating "fraud" and suggested their broadcast licences should be revoked, though he offered no evidence. Fox and CBS also carried the speech, with CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil telling viewers beforehand that "much of what the president has said on this topic is false." Sinclair, which owns or services 177 TV stations across 79 markets, previously drew attention for pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live! last autumn over remarks about Charlie Kirk's death.