Cable networks covered President Trump’s Army parade on a busy day of protests, a political assassination and Middle East strikes. ABC, CBS and NBC aired other programming on their affiliates.
On Fox News, it felt like Thanksgiving Day and Christmas rolled into one.
“You feel the energy here, everyone is so excited,” exulted Lawrence Jones, the “Fox & Friends” host who served as an emcee of the network’s celebratory coverage of President Trump’s military parade in Washington on Saturday. “When the president took the stage, you heard the people say ‘U.S.A., U.S.A.!’”
Mr. Jones was seated with his co-host, Emily Compagno, on a riser just above Constitution Avenue, as Abrams tanks rolled by and paratroopers swooped down from the sky. An on-screen fireworks graphic twinkled in the background. Their banter resembled the excitable “Today” show crew on NBC during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Over the course of the three-hour event, which was held to celebrate the Army’s 250th birthday — it happened to be Mr. Trump’s 79th birthday, too — Fox News did not air footage of the “No Kings” rallies that were taking place simultaneously in many cities in protest of the administration’s policies.
For updates, viewers could turn to CNN and MSNBC, which toggled between the parade and Saturday’s other significant news events, including rocket attacks in the Middle East and the assassination of a Democratic politician in Minnesota.
Clarissa Ward appeared live on CNN for several early-morning dispatches from Tel Aviv, and CNN and MSNBC correspondents reported from the ground in Los Angeles, where some protesters had clashed with law enforcement.
Fox News’s reporters have extensively covered those story lines over the past few days. But on Saturday evening, the channel devoted its broadcast to pomp and circumstance. One guest, the New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, popped by to praise what she called the parade’s “positive contrast to all the doom and gloom and the protests and the ‘Dictator Trump’ stuff that we’ve been seeing in New York and L.A.