Donald Trump has promised to prevent American news conglomerates from abusing their power by limiting media monopoly.
The Republican presidential candidate in his “closing arguments” on Saturday at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 17 days ahead of the presidential election slammed what he called a biased coverage of his poll campaign in a bid to strengthen his hypothesis that the 8 November election will be rigged.
“They’re trying desperately to suppress my vote and the voice of the American people,” Trump said, as he pledged to check concentration of media ownership in a few hands. If he becomes president, he said, he will prevent a media merger between telecommunications conglomerate AT&T and Time Warner, which, apart from other assets, owns CNN and HBO.
On Saturday, AT&T Inc officially announced that it is buying Time Warner Inc, one of America’s largest media and entertainment companies.
“As an example of the power structure I’m fighting – AT&T is buying Time Warner and, thus, CNN, a deal we will not approve in my administration, because it’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few,” said Trump.
Trump also said that he would never have approved the acquisition of NBC Universal by Comcast Corp in 2013, as he believes such mergers “destroy democracy” and “poison the mind of the American voter.”
“The Comcast purchase of NBC concentrates far too much power in one massive entity that is trying to tell the voters what to think and what to do,” he said.
“Deals like this destroy democracy and we’ll look at breaking that deal up and other deals like that. This should never ever have been approved in the first place. They’re trying to poison the mind of the American voter.”
He also vowed to bring to book women who accused him of sexual misconduct. Trump lashed out at the media, saying it “fabricates” stories, while forgetting to check the facts.
“Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign,” he said.
“Total fabrication. The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”
“But a simple phone call placed to the biggest newspapers or television networks gets them wall-to-wall coverage with virtually no fact-checking whatsoever. Here is why this is relevant to you,” he told his voters, before asking them, if the media is so ingenious at “fighting” a person who, according to him, has “unlimited resources to fight back,” how easily can it manipulate ordinary voters and their lives in its present state.