CNN's Disastrous Trump Townhall

CNN's decision to host a townhall - or more accurately to provide a platform for lies and endless untruths - for Donald Trump confirms that the mainstream media after both 2016 and 2020 still has not realized that Trump cannot be treated like a normal candidate with some shred of decency or even a hint of truthfulness.  His so-called townhall was a disaster for CNN which is rightly being pilloried.  If anything good came the exercise - which propvided Trump with few hard questions and a room full of Trump cultists - it was that it confirmed for all that Trump cares nothing about the truth and seems inacapable of not lying whenever his mouth is moving. The media needs to stop providing Trump with a platform and they need to cease covering his rallies where lies and cruelty are the norm.  In the wake of the disaster, CNN executives are rightly being condemned.  Meanwhile, the behavior of the  cultist dominated audience - many of whom will park their asses in church pews this weekend - underscored the moral bankruptcy and delusions that now define the Republican Party. I continue to be dumbfounded how anyone with even a modicum of morality and decency can support Trump.  I rarely watch CNN and will be even more unlikely to watch the network after such a horrific decision to provide a platform in an immoral demagogue.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the CNN disaster.  Here are highlights:

CNN’s prime-time broadcast of a raucous town hall with Donald Trump propelled a tsunami of criticism from inside and outside the network Thursday — and renewed questions about how the news media will handle the challenge of covering the serial falsehoods of the Republican Party’s leading candidate going into the 2024 election.

The former president repeatedly dodged or sneered at questions from CNN’s moderator, Kaitlan Collins, during the live, 70-minute forum at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire on Wednesday night. He doubled down on false claims that “a rigged election” led to his 2020 ouster and referred to writer E. Jean Carroll, who just prevailed in her lawsuit against him for defamation and battery, as a “whack job,” to cheers and laughter from the audience, made up of local Republican voters.

And when Collins pressed him on why he removed classified documents from the White House, he replied: “You are a nasty person.”

“Predictably disastrous,” wrote former network TV news executive Mark Lukasiewicz, part of a chorus of media critics and political observers who bemoaned the on-air spectacle. “Live lying works. A friendly MAGA crowd consistently laughs, claps at Trump’s punchlines … and the moderator cannot begin to keep up with the AR-15 pace of lies.”

At a time when CNN has been struggling to turn around viewership decline, the telecast proved to be a ratings disappointment, . . . The more profound impact, however, may be the damage done to the reputation of the network that has long promoted itself as “the most trusted name in news.” It also raised questions about the future prospects of chief executive Chris Licht, who replaced Trump-friend-turned critic Jeff Zucker last year and is charged with striking a more neutral tone at a cable channel that exploded with impassioned commentary during the Trump years.

Journalists at CNN and others outside the organization called the town hall a “debacle,” a “disaster” and “CNN’s lowest moment.” On Twitter, the hashtags and phrases BoycottCNN, DoneWithCNN and ByeCNN trended late Wednesday.

The thrust of the criticism is that CNN’s format, which it has used for other candidates over the years, enabled Trump’s filibustering and thwarted real-time fact checking, allowing him to present a dishonest rehashing of his record. “In terms of sheer control of the stage and WWE-style platform dynamics, the horrible truth is that this outcome was preordained,” tweeted veteran political writer James Fallows.

Licht defended the decision to host Trump in this format during his regular morning meeting with network staff on Thursday.

“I am aware that there have been people with opinions [and] backlash, and that is absolutely expected,” he said . . . . America was served very well by what we did last night. People woke up and they know what the stakes are in this election in a way they didn’t the day before.”

Licht, however, was hammered by his own journalists. “We did it wrong,” said an on-air personality. “We treated him like a normal politician who could be fact-checked. We ended up dancing around a demagogue.”

“It should have been a taped interview where you could fact-check him,” said one CNN correspondent who, like the on-air personality spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve relationships and careers. . . . Another staffer, also speaking on background to avoid retaliation, suggested Licht and other executives who approved the event should resign.

[T]he Trump town hall is shaping up as another disappointment under Licht’s watch. Despite his tinkering with CNN’s daily lineup and a mandate to reposition the network as a neutral purveyor of news, Licht has been unable to stop its ratings from sliding to historic lows. . . . . Licht’s signature programming effort, the remodeling of CNN’s morning program, has largely fallen apart with the firing of co-anchor Don Lemon last month.

CNN’s daily media newsletter, Reliable Sources, was blunt in its assessment of Wednesday’s event. “It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” reporter Oliver Darcy wrote Wednesday night.

“Putting him onstage, having him answer questions like a normal candidate who didn’t get people killed in the process of trying to end the democracy he’s attempting to once again run, normalizes what Trump did,” Fanone wrote. “It sends a message that attempting a coup is just part of the process; that accepting election results is a choice; and that there are no consequences, in the media or in politics or anywhere else, for rejecting them.”

Trump, for one, expressed satisfaction with the event. “Hope everyone enjoyed CNN tonight,” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “The New Hampshire audience was AMAZING. Thank you!”

But inside CNN, the mood was dark. “I can’t believe anyone thought this was a good idea,” said one staffer, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid career repercussions. “I’ve been a CNN journalist for many years. I’ve always been so proud to say that. I’ve never, ever been ashamed of CNN until tonight.”

Hopefully other media outlets and journalists will learn for CNN's disaster. Trump cannot be given a platform to lie and the second he begins to lie, his microphone needs to be turned off.  Better yet, don't broadcast him at all.