The town hall that shook the world. Not really. CNN had a Donald Trump Town Hall and it certainly shook up the American media landscape and I want to go through some of the substance of the town hall. How did the moderator or anchor Kaitlan Collins manage the townhall? And how did CNN manage the town hall in sum total.
Here are the top line analyses for each of those three parts, and then we’ll break each of them down. Donald Trump lied uncontrollably and corrosively about just about every topic that he was asked about, immediately claiming to have won the 2020 election — he lost it — and then saying all sorts of other untrue things about Russia, about E. Jean Carroll, who he was found civily liable for sexually assaulting and defaming … lies, lies, lies, lies lies.
How about Kaitlan Collins as the moderator anchor host of this event? She did what she could. And there was pushback to some of Trump’s lies, there was an attempt at fact-checking some of Trumps lies. But the bigger story was the broader context that CNN created, which was a complete and total disgrace. You could question the general virtue or wisdom of holding such an event at all at this point in time. And what I mean by that is the following. We are not even really in the middle of the Republican primary yet, nevermind the 2024 election. And what I mean by that is, it’s months before the Republican primary debates even start. There’s no serious contender currently running against Donald Trump. It’s Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley, DeSantis is polling okay, about half of where Trump is, but DeSantis isn’t actually running.
So to say, you’re practically speaking unopposed and have a completely unobstructed path to this nomination. It’s months before the debates even start. I don’t know. Let’s give you a town hall and do the town hall in front of a brown-nosing sycophant crowd.
And the crowd was a big part of why Kaitlan Collins was really limited in what she was able to do in terms of keeping the thing on track. Trump steamrolled Kaitlan Collins a bunch of times when she would try to fact check. And he would have tried to do that no matter what. Even if they were in a quiet room, just the two of them. But because the crowd was filled with these brown-nosing Trump sycophants, they encouraged an environment where Trump would just try to steamroll her and succeed. If the crowd was cheering or the crowd was laughing, you knew it was a particularly disgusting moment during that town hall.
As an example, when Trump told Kaitlan Collins that she’s a nasty person, the crowd cheered and laughed. What’s funny about a former president who’s supposed to respect and revere a free press, insulting the journalist when they start asking slightly tougher questions? It’s disgusting, but the crowd cheered and laughed and loved it.
Another example, the town hall took place the day after a jury found Trump’s civilly liable for sexual assault and defamation against E. Jean Carroll. Trump told all sorts of deranged stories about E. Jean Carroll, including further attacking her calling her a whack job and on and on, ridiculing her claims which a jury found credible. And the crowd laughed. They laughed out loud, everybody having a grand old time at the expense of someone who has been found by a jury to be the victim of a sexual assault from Trump. Laughing at it, if you can think of something more depraved.
So I understand CNN’s reasoning for doing this. So you think the election so far away, nobody’s running against Trump, it’s so early. Why, why give the guy this, this publicity in this way? It’s because it generated great interest. CNN under the leadership of Chris Licht is looking to do what it can to see better ratings. And you have a situation right now where because [sic] Trump has been attacking Fox News for about a year and because Fox News recently fired Tucker Carlson, you have millions of people who are disaffected by Fox News. They want something else they want a different home. And what better thing than to host Donald Trump in front of a sycophant crowd, to have him rudely react to Kaitlan Collins who’s supposed to be hosting the thing?
That’s a great way to attract some of these potentially disaffected Fox viewers. So in sum total, it was a journalistic disgrace. It was successful for CNN in the sense of a ratings-generating environment. And then one last thing I’ll say about this. For all of the independent media that do media analysis who talked about the event like I did, I do think it’s dangerous. I got a few emails of people saying, “David, you’re just as bad as CNN because you’re talking about the event.” No, no. First of all, if I organized such an event, I wouldn’t do it in front of a sycophant crowd and I would have someone even better prepared to rebut the insanity of Trump. But it I didn’t organize it. But if we do media criticism, it’s imperative that we cover such propaganda events in order to point out how they are propaganda events. I think it’s imperative, so let’s not mix CNN’s actions with that of all of the great media critique shows that are pointing out why the event was such a dangerous disaster.