Donald Trump wants everyone to start watching his campaign's new show on Facebook Live — just don't call it Trump TV.
On Monday night, Trump Tower Live, a 30-minute show that will air nightly on Trump's Facebook page, was launched, and host Boris Epshteyn made it clear this was not a practice run for Trump's much-rumored Trump TV project. Epshteyn and co-host Cliff Sims both spent the beginning of the show making the case for why now is the time to run such programming. "This is our campaign and most importantly our candidate being out there and speaking directly to the voters, directly to the viewers," Epshteyn said. "We are excited to be bypassing the left-wing media, which screws everything up." Sims declared it would be "malpractice on our part if we didn't utilize the massive online platform that [Trump] has to take his vision, his message to Make America Great Again, directly to the people."
Trump Tower Live got off to a bumpy start — the team didn't appear to know when they first went live, the sound at times was uneven, and there were some awkward pauses — but at one point, more than 50,000 people were watching, the Los Angeles Times reports; the number of viewers dropped off by half by the time the show was over. Night one's guests included Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and the Republican National Committee's Sean Spicer.
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