Jared Kushner said the agreement with Sinclair gave them more access to Donald Trump and the campaign. | Getty Kushner: We struck deal with Sinclair for straighter coverage

Donald Trump's campaign struck a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group during the campaign to try and secure better media coverage, his son-in-law Jared Kushner told business executives Friday in Manhattan.

Kushner said the agreement with Sinclair, which owns television stations across the country in many swing states and often packages news for their affiliates to run, gave them more access to Trump and the campaign, according to six people who heard his remarks.


In exchange, Sinclair would broadcast their Trump interviews across the country without commentary, Kushner said. Kushner highlighted that Sinclair, in states like Ohio, reaches a much wider audience — around 250,000 listeners — than networks like CNN, which reach somewhere around 30,000.

“It’s math,” Kushner said according to multiple attendees.

But Sinclair and other networks said such a deal is nothing nefarious or new - just an arrangement for extended sit-down interviews with both candidates, one many campaigns have done in previous years to get around the national media and directly to viewers in key states.

Scott Livingston, vice president of news at Sinclair, said the offer for extended interviews with local anchors was made to both candidates. Trump did a handful of interviews, while Sen. Tim Kaine did a few as well, though Hillary Clinton did not.

“Our promise was to give all candidates an opportunity to voice their position share their position with our viewers. Certainly we presented an opportunity so that Mr. Trump could clearly state his position on the key issues,” Livingston said. “Our commitment to our viewers is to go beyond podium, beyond the rhetoric. We’re all about tracking the truth and telling the truth and that’s typically missing in most political coverage.”

A Trump spokesman said the deal included the interviews running across every affiliate but that no money was exchanged between the network and the campaign. The spokesman said the campaign also worked with other media outlets that had affiliates, like Hearst, to try and spread their message.

Barbara Maushard, senior vice president for news at Hearst Television said in a statement "Any suggestion that Hearst Television cut any deal with political candidates is categorically false and absurd.”

“It was a standard package, but an extended package, extended story where you’d hear more directly from candidate on the issue instead of hearing all the spin and all the rhetoric,” Livingston said.

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said they had nothing to add to Sinclair’s explanation.

Sinclair, a Maryland-based company, has been labeled in some reports as a conservative-leaning local news network. Local stations in the past have been directed to air “must run” stories produced by Sinclair’s Washington bureau that were generally critical of Obama administration and offered perspectives primarily from conservative think tanks, The Washington Post reported in 2014.

A Kushner spokeswoman declined to comment on his remarks, made at an off-the-record meeting in the Morgan Stanley Cafeteria for the Partnership for New York City, a business group, and referred questions to the campaign.

Kushner, dressed in a suit and sneakers, told the business executives that the campaign was upset with CNN because they considered its on-air panels stacked against Trump. He added that he personally talked with Jeff Zucker about changing the composition of the panels but Zucker refused. He repeatedly said in the panel that CNN wasn't "moving the needle" and wasn't important as it once was, according to three of the people present.

The campaign then decided not to work as closely with CNN, and Trump ramped up his bashing of the cable network.

Two people present said that they were surprised how much Kushner talked about CNN. "He kept going on and on about it," one business executive said.

He also told the crowd that Google and Facebook are now more powerful, and that The New York Times and CNN aren't as powerful.

A CNN spokesperson declined to comment.

Kushner also said that he had learned far more about the country by traveling with Trump and was now a different person, calling the thousands of people who would show up to Trump rallies “amazing Americans.”

“Here he is with 400 elites, CEOs of the banks, those are his people. He’s among his people, but he’s speaking this Trump-like language,” one attendee said.

Joe Pompeo contributed reporting from New York.