Liz Crokin
@lizcrokin
3h
Even the other FAKE NEWS outlets know CNN’s Town Hall with @realDonaldTrump was a disaster for them! 😂 Only a stable genius could pull this off! 🔥
May 11, 2023, 1:21 AM
https://truthsocial.com/@lizcrokin/posts/110348368461022812
'APPALLING'
‘F–king Disgrace’: CNN Gifts Trump Primetime Campaign Rally
CNN INVITED DONALD Trump to lie on its airwaves for over an hour on Wednesday night. The evening was billed as a town hall, but played more like a campaign rally for the former president, who steamrolled and repeatedly mocked moderator Kaitlin Collins, pushing a torrent of misinformation about the 2020 election, the multiple investigations into his conduct, and pretty much everything else he commented on.
One CNN insider who spoke to Rolling Stone called the evening “appalling,” lamenting that the network gave Trump “a huge platform to spew his lies.”
Collins tried her best to correct Trump as he spoke. And immediately after Trump went off-air, CNN anchor Jake Tapper led a parade of pundits and fact-checkers to counter his dissembling and pan his performance.
Jake Tapper sums up Trump's town hall: "He called a black law enforcement officer a thug. He said people here in Washington, D.C. and Chinatown don’t speak English. He attacked Kaitlan as a nasty woman… he made fun of [Carrol's] sexual assault and many in the audience laughed." pic.twitter.com/NSzVzVEApP
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) May 11, 2023
Nevertheless, the town hall was “a fucking disgrace,” in the words of another network insider. “1000 percent a mistake [to host Trump]. No one [at CNN] is happy.”
“Just brutal,” added one of the network’s primetime producers.
A CNN spokesperson defended the network’s decision to host Trump — and Collins, the host who tried to stop his steamroller of lies. Collins “exemplified what it means to be a world-class journalist. She asked tough, fair and revealing questions. And she followed up and fact-checked President Trump in real time to arm voters with crucial information about his positions as he enters the 2024 election as the Republican frontrunner,” the spokesperson said in a statement to Rolling Stone. “That is CNN’s role and responsibility: to get answers and hold the powerful to account.”
But Team Trump didn’t seem to feel that the boss wasn’t held to much of anything. Even before the conclusion of the town hall’s first hour, the reactions within Trump’s circle were universally joyous. Some close aides to the ex-president were almost baffled that the night went that well for them, according to sources in and close to the campaign. “We want to thank CNN for their generous donation to President Trump’s campaign!” one Trump adviser said late on Wednesday.
“[Trump] should literally do this every night,” one operative working closely with the Trump 2024 team said about an hour into the live event. “Nightly CNN hits!”
For Trump’s political lieutenants, the evening served as a dose of vindication of his and his staff’s plans to heavily saturate the kinds of major media outlets that GOP rivals like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have largely avoided, people familiar with the plans say. “Part of the idea is to bury Ron [in the media], and to laugh at him for being so weak that he can’t even stand up to CNN,” another person close to Trump says. “To just completely swamp him.”
The strategy is similar to Trump’s past tactics — which long predate his presidency — of flooding the press and the tabloids with so much of his presence, even (and perhaps especially) in times of scandal or crisis.
“Control the agenda,” as sources with direct knowledge of Trump’s past directive put it.
Trump himself was certainly energized by the audience in New Hampshire, which CNN filled with his supporters. During one exchange in which Collins tried, and failed, to get him to take a side in the war in Ukraine — or at least to condemn Vladimir Putin — the crowd applauded his deflections. Collins ultimately moved on after the former president refused to give straight answers to any of her questions, instead pushing his well-worn talking points about the conflict.