Donald Trump appeared to launch a prototype of his rumored Trump News Network on Wednesday night as he took to social media minutes before the third presidential debate to hawk his own live coverage of the event.
"If you're tired of biased, mainstream media reporting (otherwise known as Crooked Hillary’s super PAC), tune into my Facebook Live broadcast," Trump crowed. "Starts at 8:30 EST/5:30 PST — you won’t want to miss it. Enjoy!"
The show that followed featured retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer with a running commentary occasionally interrupted with political ads for Trump and a message from his daughter Ivanka.
According to BuzzFeed, the livestream comes amid rumors that Trump's wealthy son-in-law Jared Kushner is shopping a Trump network.
At its peak, the broadcast had some 200,000 concurrent viewers, then fell off to about 120,000, BuzzFeed says.
While the Trump campaign wasn't commenting about the Trump News Network "debut," many political pundits have said for months that the Republican presidential candidate’s run is all about creating a cable network.
And The New York Times asked Thursday morning, "Was Wednesday the final presidential debate of 2016 or the opening night of the Trump News Channel? … a half-hour before the debate, we got a sneak preview of what Trump TV might look like, via Mr. Trump's Facebook page."
The Times also pooh-poohed the program as "a ramshackle pregame show [that] was like state television produced by QVC, with interviews by, of and for Mr. Trump’s supporters, cable-news-like graphics and a relentless sales pitch."
At one point, the crawl at the bottom of the screen read, “IN A FANTASTIC DEBATE DONALD TRUMP MAKES HIS CASE TO BE THE PRESIDENT.”