Trump Targets Dubious Deal Between Sharpton and Harris

Chuck Ross of the Washington Free Beacon highlights a significant social media thread from the incoming president.

President-elect Donald Trump accused MSNBC host Al Sharpton of taking illegal donations from the Kamala Harris campaign ahead of softball interviews with the Democrat last year, potentially spelling trouble for MSNBC and its parent company Comcast ahead of a planned corporate spinoff.

In a series of posts on Truth Social, Trump accused the Harris campaign of seeking to “illegally buy endorsements” from Sharpton and celebrities like Beyoncé Knowles and Oprah Winfrey prior to the election.

Trump’s remarks were based on a Washington Free Beacon report that the Harris campaign donated $500,000 to Sharpton’s nonprofit, the National Action Network, weeks before the activist interviewed Harris on his MSNBC show, PoliticsNation.

“Totally against the law,” Trump asserted.

The comments raise questions about whether Trump could take action in his second presidential term to block Comcast’s proposed spinoff of its news networks. The media giant in November announced plans to spin off NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC into a separate public company—a bid to separate its movie studios from the dwindling cable TV business.Comcast and MSNBC did not return requests for comment.

At least one industry expert said that while he did not expect the spinoff to face headwinds from federal agencies, Trump was an “X factor” that could gum up the process. Trump could “slow-down or otherwise interfere with the transaction,” said investment analyst Blair Levin, who noted that MSNBC is a “major Trump nemesis.”

Last year, Trump posted that, if reelected, he would investigate Comcast over what he called “one-side[d] and vicious coverage” from the media conglomerate’s flagship news channels, NBC and MSNBC.

And Trump could be emboldened to take on the media conglomerate after winning a $15 million legal settlement last month with ABC News over comments from host George Stephanopoulos, who falsely claimed Trump was found liable for raping a woman in the 1990s.