Trump’s Town Hall Triumph: Team Celebrates While CNN Staff Condemns ‘Spectacle of Lies’

"Controversial Town Hall with Donald Trump Sparks Outrage and Embarrassment for CNN, Despite President's Satisfaction"

Former US President Donald Trump’s recent town hall hosted by CNN has sparked outrage and embarrassment for the network, as many of its staff were upset that it gave Trump a platform to lie to a large audience. Despite this, Trump and his circle believe that the event was a strategic win for him. According to sources close to Trump, he was interested in doing the town hall with CNN for two main reasons. Firstly, there was an understanding that CNN would book Trump surrogates, which a CNN spokesperson denied. Secondly, it would give the campaign vast amounts of material to clip for social media.

Trump’s team negotiated the terms of the event with an unusual degree of leverage, playing hard to get with CNN for months. However, the campaign had always been more likely to go with CNN over MSNBC or Fox News, the other major networks in talks to host an event. Trump’s team also figured that CNN worked for its needs because it could have Kaitlan Collins as the moderator. Collins is a rising star who co-hosts the network’s morning show but has also remained on the Trump beat and has carefully preserved a relationship with the ex-president.

During the town hall, Trump revelled in playing off the live audience of Republican and Republican-leaning voters in New Hampshire, which is hosting the first 2024 GOP presidential primary. He talked over the CNN moderator, Kaitlin Collins, as she tried to fact-check him in real time. Trump’s allies joked that the event amounted to an hour of Trump infomercials and should be recorded as an in-kind campaign contribution. They also suggested that Trump’s nearest rival for the nomination, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, would be crushed in a similar debate.

However, the event may not help Trump in a general election, especially among female voters. Joe Biden later tweeted, “It’s simple, folks. Do you want four more years of that? If you don’t, pitch in to our campaign.” In stark contrast to the Trump camp’s jubilation, the mood inside CNN was dour amid widespread reports of internal disgust. The network’s own media reporter Oliver Darcy wrote in his newsletter that it was “hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN”.

The Trump campaign made sure the pre- and post-town hall coverage featured Trump surrogates on air. Among the bookings were former Trump White House press aide Hogan Gidley, pro-Trump congressmen Brian Mast and Byron Donalds, as well as pro-Trump senator JD Vance. A spokesperson for CNN denied that the network made any formal agreement to book surrogates as guests in order to host the town hall.

Not every moment in the town hall was seen as a win for Trump, though, as his own missteps may have created more legal headaches for a man already surrounded by multiple investigations. Asked by Collins whether he had shown classified documents at Mar-a-Lago to anyone, Trump replied “not really”, an answer that is almost certain to be of interest to prosecutors examining his mishandling of such material. Special counsel Jack Smith, appointed by US Attorney General Merrick Garland to lead the criminal investigation into Trump’s retention of national security documents and obstruction of justice, has recently been asking witnesses whether Trump showed off the documents after his presidency.

The New York Times also reported on Wednesday that Trump may also face a new lawsuit from the writer E Jean Carroll over his diatribe against her at the town hall, when he said that her decades-old sexual abuse claim that a jury held him liable for this week was a “made-up story”. Despite these potential legal issues, Trump was personally jubilant on the flight back to Florida and played It’s a Man’s World by James Brown, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Martin Reid

Martin Reid

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