Networks cut away from Trump's White House address
New York: ABC, CBS and NBC all cut away from President Donald Trump as he spoke from the White House to make an unfounded accusation that the presidential election was being stolen from him.
Trump on Thursday tried to commandeer the nation's airwaves at a time when the evening newscasts are shown on the East Coast, after a day when the slow drip of vote counting revealed his leads in Pennsylvania and Georgia dwindling.
MSNBC's Brian Williams also interrupted the president. Fox News Channel and CNN aired the president's full address, after which CNN's Anderson Cooper said Trump was like an obese turtle on his back, flailing in the hot sun realising his time was over .
Network personalities had sharply criticised Trump after his angry, middle-of-the-night speech following Election Day but aired that talk in full. Trump was more subdued on Thursday, yet offered a litany of complaints about suppression polls, mail-in voting and fraud that he never specified.
We have to interrupt here, because the president has made a number of false statements, including the notion that there has been fraudulent voting, said NBC's Lester Holt. There has been no evidence of that.
CBS' Norah O'Donnell broke in to ask correspondent Nancy Cordes to fact-check Trump's assertion that if legal votes were counted, he would easily win the election. Cordes said there is no indication of a substantive number of illegal votes cast, and said Trump's reference to votes arriving late was another falsehood.
MSNBC cut away from Trump to anchor Brian Williams.
Here we are again in the unusual position of not only interrupting the president of the United States but correcting the president of the United States, he said. There are no illegal votes that we know of, there has been no Trump victory that we know of.
After ABC ended its coverage, the network's White House correspondent, Jonathan Karl, also said there was no evidence of illegal votes.
What he seems to be frustrated by is...that it takes time to count votes, Karl said. It's always taken time to count votes. But especially in this election.
While CNN kept Trump on the air, a chyron displayed under him said, Without any evidence, Trump says he's being cheated. Anchor Jake Tapper looked weary when it was over.
What a sad night for the United States of America to hear their president say that, to falsely accuse people of trying to steal the election, to try to attack democracy in that way with this feast of falsehoods," he said. Lie after lie after lie. Pathetic.
CNN analysts David Axelrod and Van Jones both said they were angered by Trump's attacks on authorities in Detroit and Philadelphia, suggesting they amounted to racism.
On Fox News Channel, commentators Bill Bennett and Byron York said that just because Trump did not allege specific instances of irregularities doesn't mean there haven't been any. But the president and his lawyers need to present evidence, they said.
What we saw tonight is a president who believes that at the end of the day, when all the votes are counted, the election is not going to to go his way, so he's trying to plan an alternate route to retain the White House, said Fox White House correspondent John Roberts.
The New York Post, a prominent Trump media ally, headlined a story on the speech, Donald Trump makes baseless election fraud claims in White House address.
CBS News' John Dickerson said Trump's speech felt like kind of a deflated recitation .
The third day of election coverage on the networks was like a high school math class, filled with numbers geeks like MSNBC's Steve Kornacki and CNN's John King explaining the intricacies of the votes being reported.
With Biden chipping away at Trump's leads in states crucial to any chance of the president getting the necessary 270 electoral votes, it was unlike any math class in that it was building to a big ending.
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Rupee rises 6 paise to 89.92 against US dollar in early trade
Mumbai (PTI): The rupee witnessed range-bound trade in the morning session on Friday, appreciating by 6 paise to 89.92 against the US dollar as thin liquidity conditions accentuated everyday demand-supply imbalances, keeping the rupee tilted toward weakness.
Forex traders said the USD/INR pair is expected to trade in a narrow range as the 90 level is being protected by the Reserve Bank of India.
Moreover, the support from positive domestic equities was offset by sustained foreign fund outflows.
At the interbank foreign exchange market, the rupee opened at 89.95 against the US dollar, then gained some ground and touched 89.92, rising by six paise from its previous close.
On Thursday, the rupee depreciated 10 paise to close at 89.98 against the US dollar.
"Unless RBI comes and sells dollars heavily, the movement is going to be in small ranges as seen in the last three sessions. The pair is seen in a holding pattern between 89.80 and 90, considering the narrow range," said Anil Kumar Bhansali, Head of Treasury and Executive Director at Finrex Treasury Advisors LLP.
Bhansali further noted that corporate demand, FPI demand, and government demand have been the salient features of the rupee over the past year, during which it fell by more than 5 per cent and became the worst-performing Asian currency, though partly protected by the RBI.
Meanwhile, the dollar index, which gauges the greenback's strength against a basket of six currencies, was trading marginally down by 0.15 per cent at 98.17.
Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, was trading 0.38 per cent higher at USD 61.08 per barrel in futures trade.
"With early-year liquidity still thin and domestic fundamentals offering a mixed but stable backdrop, the rupee appears set to remain range-bound in the near term. As long as USD/INR stays below the 90 handle, the balance of risks tilts mildly in favour of the rupee," CR Forex Advisors MD Amit Pabari said, adding that against this backdrop, USD/INR is expected to trade in a 89.30–90.20 range.
On the domestic equity market front, the 30-share benchmark index Sensex climbed 158.19 points to 85,346.79 in early trade, while the Nifty was up 55.8 points to 26,202.35.
Foreign institutional investors offloaded equities worth Rs 3,268.60 crore on Thursday, according to exchange data.
On the domestic macroeconomic front, gross GST collections rose 6.1 per cent to over Rs 1.74 lakh crore in December 2025, on slow growth in revenues from domestic sales following the sweeping tax cuts, according to government data released on Thursday.
Gross Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenue in December 2024 was over Rs 1.64 lakh crore.
