CNN’s messy Donald Trump City Hall is being panned

Wednesday’s City Hall was the first major televised event of the 2024 presidential campaign, and CNN defended its decision to hold it as a chance to introduce Trump to a wider audience, outside of the conservative media bubble he’s largely clung to since the beginning of his presidency.

Critics said the event, which came before Republicans and independent voters expected to vote in the GOP primary, morphed into a Trump campaign rally instead, allowing him to do so Repeat longstanding untruths while dodging difficult questions

Tom Jones, a senior writer at media research institute Poynter, said he supported the idea of ​​CNN holding town hall at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. But he said he was surprised by the audience’s behavior, which he expected would be more neutral.

Instead, the audience gave Trump a standing ovation as he took the stage, applauded some of his most provocative comments, and laughed at many of his jokes, including when he criticized E. Jean Carroll, the advice columnist who accused him of raping her in 1996 this week won a $5 million judgment against him.

Jones said the atmosphere had increased CNN anchor Kaitlan Collinsin an almost impossible position as she tried to elicit straight answers from Trump and his comments on his supporters’ storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 and the 2020 election he still falsely claims to have won to check facts.

“Whenever she could have cornered him, the audience built him up,” Jones said. “It just encouraged him. He realized, “I can do and say whatever I want,” and at that point, through no fault of her own, she was rolled over. She was against the whole room.”

The event was significant for the New era of leadership at CNN and management’s efforts to lure back viewers who have turned Fox News and other conservative media over the past decade.

At a meeting Thursday morning at CNN, Chairman and CEO Chris Licht praised Collins’ “masterful performance” and said she asked difficult questions under difficult circumstances.

“If someone was going to ask tough questions and have this messy conversation, it should be the fuck on CNN,” he said in a recording of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press.

He also defended the decision to hold City Hall in front of a pro-Trump crowd.

“While we all might have been uncomfortable hearing the people clapping, it was also an important part of the story because the people in this audience represent a large part of America,” Licht said. “And the mistake the media has made in the past was to ignore that these people exist. Just like you cannot ignore the existence of President Trump.”

The event expanded CNN’s audience for at least one evening. Nielson said City Hall had an average of 3.3 million viewers, compared to 707,000 who tuned in to CNN the night before during the same airtime slot.

But Jones said he was skeptical City Hall would help CNN’s reputation in the long run given the backlash. He pointed out that most of the network’s comments after the event were highly critical of Trump and likely angered conservative viewers who tuned in to see the former president.

Nick Arama, a writer for conservative website RedState.com, criticized CNN’s Gary Tuchman, who spoke to some viewers after Trump’s appearance, saying, “He wasn’t acting so much like a moderator trying to get your opinion as a Democrat. “Propagandist trying to impose his own opinion on them.”

Meanwhile, critics from the left have been blunt, saying CNN should have predicted how chaotic the event would be.

“CNN should be ashamed. They have lost complete control of this “town hall” and are once again being manipulated into spreading disinformation about elections, defending January 6th and publicly attacking a victim of sexual abuse. “The audience cheers for him and laughs at the presenter,” said New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. wrote in a tweet.

Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief now at George Washington University, said the event heralded the difficult reporting decisions “that every news organization has to deal with because Donald Trump is not a normal candidate.”

“You can’t ignore him, but you can’t give him carte blanche either,” he said.

A one-on-one interview would have been preferable, but whether Trump would have agreed to that is another question, Sesno said, adding that he thought it was valuable to give Trump the opportunity to speak to a wider audience, including many people who might have done that has largely eclipsed him in recent years.

Sesno noted that although Trump supporters applauded his performance, Republican critics, including New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, used it to voice concerns about the former president’s ability to win a national election bring.

“As chaotic and strange as the event was, as a journalist I think it’s important that people see it,” he said.