The CNN panel that immediately followed the network’s town hall with Donald Trump was aghast at what they’d just witnessed.
Here was a man who repeatedly was badgered by Kaitlan Collins, the moderator, to recant on his claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” or stolen in some way.
Trump refused to budge.
Full Video: CNN Trump Town Hall (May 10)
From the first few minutes, it was clear that this would not be CNN’s night. Trump stood live on stage before a very Trump-friendly crowd and went down the list of issue after issue refusing to give in to the narrative and refusing to bow to pressure.
Take this panelist from the CNN focus group assembled to provide analysis after the event, for example. It’s the media that’s obsessed with the 2020 election and January 6th, not Donald Trump, he astutely points out:
This is hilarious.
CNN attempts to open their Trump Town Hall focus group with a gotcha question and their talking head instantly gets owned! pic.twitter.com/N0wu8KhHjE
— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) May 11, 2023
As Ed Kilgore put it, writing in New York Magazine, the CNN town hall was basically a MAGA rally:
I half-expected Trump to come out half-deranged, raving about his persecution by liberal elites and their judicial-system hirelings. Even the ex-president himself said the event might “be a total disaster for all — including me!”
It didn’t go down that way at all. For much of the New Hampshire town hall, the crowd of Republicans and independents cheered Trump and hooted at Collins. Most of the relatively few audience questions were softballs. All that was missing from this CNN-sponsored MAGA rally was Trump doing his weird “dance” steps to “Y.M.C.A.” Most shockingly, when Trump again defamed and mocked Carroll for suggesting he assaulted her, the audience laughed and applauded. It was a brutal politician feeding on a brutal crowd.
Trump rarely broke a sweat. Indeed, he almost looked bored for the first 45 minutes, only getting animated toward the end. In the post-event analysis from a clearly chagrined group of CNN talking heads, the fact-checking and exposure of lies was fast and furious. But the damage was already done.
All in all, CNN did Trump a huge favor, unless you think that so unvarnished a reminder of his essential nature will hurt him among swing voters. How can Ron DeSantis compete with this man in expressing the rage of his party’s base? Trump didn’t invent it, but he has mastered it.
That about sums it up.
The disconnect between the CNN analysts who remained practically unable to speak and the audience in the room cheering Trump on was a perfect representation of the divide in America today and that which existed in 2016.
From the onset, despite mounting evidence that the intelligence community intentionally lied to cover up the Hunter Biden laptop and the Biden crime family in 2020, Collins was obsessed with downplaying the 2020 “rigged” election narrative. There’s no denying, however, that multiple forces colluded to protect Joe Biden from his own failures and to suppress information, Trump mentioned that himself on stage, probably more than once.
Both sides are dug in. The media, led by CNN last night, remains ardently positive that no such shenanigans took place in 2020. None.
On the other hand, facts and reality don’t lie as more scrutiny is now being heaved on the 51 former intel agents who signed a letter in 2020 calling the Hunter Biden laptop “Russian disinformation,” a charge now known to be entirely false.
What happened on CNN last night was simply the first battle of many Trump will have with the media and various anchors as he moves forward in the primary. They hate the fact that he’s still politically viable and the far-and-away front-runner on the Republican side.
The fact that CNN was disgusted or appalled that he would say the things on their air that he says every day is laughable. It’s as if they knew what he would say so they tried to pre-empt it by having a moderator interrupt him every four seconds to derail his thoughts.
All-in-all, a win for Trump and likely a win for CNN’s ratings, but not for its ego.
Full Video: CNN Trump Town Hall (May 10)
