President Trump's first Oval Office address didn't make for compelling TV

The New York Times

Trump's first live address from the Oval Office, addressing the controversy over the U.S.-Mexico border, fell flat. "What there was not, after two days of media drama, was a convincing argument for why this needed to be a prime-time event at all," says James Poniewozik. "There was no news. There was no new argument. There was just a wall of sound, and the American viewing audience paid for it. Nor was there much compelling television, unless you’re an avid maker of internet memes. This was not a friendly setting for either party. The Oval Office, which can confer gravitas on a typical president, simply saps this atypical one. Mr. Trump comes alive playing off a crowd, like the ones he drove wild with promises that Mexico would pay for the wall. Plopped behind a desk, sniffling, reading sleepily from a TelePrompTer, he was a comedian playing an empty room."

ALSO:

• Networks interrupted their schedules "for a rerun of one of the longest-running programs on national television: Trump’s immigration talking points"
• Broadcast networks ended their coverage of Trump's speech by 9:30 p.m. ET
• None of the networks attempted to fact check Trump in real time
• Even Fox News had a fact check of the president, from Shepard Smith
• Stephen Colbert gives Trump's wall speech an alternate ending
• Jimmy Kimmel blasts Trump's speech: "Rarely does a president of the United States interrupt primetime television to warn us about a completely made-up thing"