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Donald Trump is going to announce his Supreme Court pick on Facebook Live

Whoever wins, Facebook wins.

President Trump Signs Executive Order In Oval Office Of The White House
President Trump Signs Executive Order In Oval Office Of The White House
Andrew Harrer - Pool / Getty

Curious who the next U.S. Supreme Court justice will be? President Trump wants you to tune in live!

In what is beginning to feel a bit like a televised LeBron James-style “Decision” stunt — or an episode of “The Bachelor” — Trump is set to announce his pick for the Supreme Court tonight (Jan. 31) at 8 pm ET on live TV — and on the POTUS Facebook Live channel.

Watch it below.

No matter who Trump selects — judges Thomas Hardiman and Neil Gorsuch are expected to be the only two “finalists” for the job — the decision to stream the announcement live on Facebook plays to Trump’s strategy to own his media message. It’s also a win for the social network, even if will be all over television.

Trump gets a lot of attention for his aggressive and unprecedented Twitter use, but he’s promoting that he’s using Facebook’s live video product instead of Google’s YouTube or Twitter-owned Periscope, which is interesting. (He even announced the Facebook livestream on Twitter.)

There’s no reason to assume he couldn’t use all three, but he hasn’t said anything about using Periscope, and the company’s CEO, Kayvon Beykpour, hasn’t been pleased with Trump’s immigration policies. Periscope even changed its login screen to include the phrase, “Proudly made in America by immigrants.”

(Mark Zuckerberg, on the other hand, issued what felt like a half-hearted condemnation late last week.)

Facebook does pay a bunch of celebrities and publishers to use its live product. It seems unlikely that Trump is one of them, but we’ve asked just in case and will update if we hear back. (After all, he was more a celebrity than a politician a year ago.)

Update: Facebook has confirmed that it is not paying Trump or the White House to use Facebook Live. “There are no incentives or Live partnerships with the President or the White House,” a spokesperson told Recode.

Facebook is looking for TV-quality video content and Trump will most certainly deliver. You can watch the feed live from his Facebook page here.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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