In 2016, former CBS head honcho Les Moonves said Donald Trump’s presence in politics “may be bad for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Clearly Moonves was not the only network head to have made such an assessment. On Thursday, just on CNN and MSNBC, Trump was mentioned by name a whopping 399 times between 6:00 am and 4:00 p.m. ET.
Trump’s frontrunner status in the Republican primary has made him a hot topic of discussion whenever a new candidate enters the race, and Thursday was no exception. In the freshly announced candidacies of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), pundits on the liberal cable networks found two shiny new reasons to pontificate about all things Trump.
MRC analysts used a combination of live broadcasts and Snapstream transcripts to find every mention of the former President on CNN and MSNBC. In just 10 hours, Trump’s name was invoked 399 times across both networks. MSNBC just barely edged out its competitor with 208 mentions (52%), while CNN was responsible for the remaining 191 mentions (48%).