A senior White House official has expressed frustration that most major news networks declined to broadcast a slideshow presentation prepared for President Donald Trump’s recent address. Kevin Hassett, the president’s economic adviser, voiced his disappointment on the “Morning Joe” program, lamenting the significant time invested in creating the visual aids.

Hassett confirmed earlier reports that the administration had shared these slides with various networks, urging them to display the graphics during Trump’s speech. However, with the exception of Fox News, most broadcasters opted against airing the presentation, citing a lack of clear sourcing information from the White House.

Some of the slides that Fox News did broadcast, labeled as “White House graphic,” appeared to contradict some of the claims made by the president during his address. For example, a graphic presented by Fox News indicated the national average gasoline price was around $3 per gallon, even as Trump asserted prices had fallen below that threshold in many parts of the country.

Brian Stelter, CNN’s chief media analyst, noted that Fox News explicitly identified the slides as originating from the White House, a signal to viewers about their provenance. Sean Hannity, a prominent Fox News host and a close ally of the president, also shared some of these slides on his program following Trump’s speech.

During the “Morning Joe” interview, co-host Jonathan Lemire pressed Hassett on the president’s tendency to embellish facts, prompting the economic adviser to pivot to the issue of the omitted slides. Hassett argued that the president and his team had dedicated considerable effort to preparing these visuals to ensure factual accuracy and provide documented data for his remarks.

Hassett described the decision by networks not to air the presentation as “unusual,” expressing his expectation that the slides would be widely displayed across different channels. He suggested that if specific figures were questioned, it might be a matter of misspoken words, and he was prepared to discuss the data presented.

When asked about other networks’ coverage, Hassett encouraged “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough to consider airing the slides, particularly in comparison to economic analyst Stephen Rattner’s own charts presented earlier on the show. Hassett emphasized that the Council of Economic Advisers had fact-checked the slides, underscoring their perceived validity.

The president’s address itself drew criticism from various quarters, with some viewers comparing him to a distressed figure and one social media user likening the speech to an “old man yells at cloud” scenario. Even conservative commentator Matt Walsh described the address as potentially the “most pointless primetime presidential address ever delivered in American history.”

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Keywords: Kevin Hassett, Donald Trump speech, White House slides, news network coverage, presidential address, economic adviser, media criticism, gas prices