CNN’s Trump Town Hall ‘Not Journalism. This Is Entertainment’
Cable network criticized for giving former president a platform
CNN is coming under fire for its planned televised “Town Hall” forum Wednesday featuring Donald Trump.
By offering him the opportunity, critics say, the network is helping normalize and rehabilitate a former president under criminal indictment and who helped foment a violent insurrection against the US government.
Moreover, they add, CNN is using as its moderator of the event a journalist who began her career for a right-wing website.
CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins will moderate the event at St. Anselm College, in New Hampshire, which will air on Wednesday and will feature the former president taking questions from New Hampshire Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in the 2024 GOP presidential primary as Trump once again is running for president.
This will be Trump's first appearance on CNN since the 2016 presidential campaign.
“It feels like horrifically bad judgment to me. Let’s be clear about this. This is not journalism. This is entertainment,” said “Never Trumper” commentator Charlie Sykes. “In journalism, you actually will control the questions and the answers, and you’ll have some sort of a filter for misinformation. CNN will not be able to filter or control the disinformation that Donald Trump puts out on the air live, and CNN will not even be able to control the kinds of issues that are talked about.
“In journalism, you would ask him about the 26 women who have alleged sexual assault. You would ask him about whether or not he believes the Constitution should be terminated. You would ask him about January 6. You would ask him about pardoning the people that attacked the police officers,” added Sykes, editor-in-chief of the website The Bulwark and a former conservative radio host. “Will that be what Republican MAGA leaning voters in New Hampshire are going to discuss? And yet they have given him a full hour of air time, and Donald Trump knows entertainment. He’s allergic to journalism, which is why he’s going to love this town hall.”
Reporters and others have reason to be concerned about the Trump appearance on CNN, according to Angelo Carusone, author and president of Media Matters for America, a nonprofit media watchdog. “There are reporters, people who are concerned, they have good reason to be. Because it’s not just that he’s out there promoting the same kinds of disinformation. He’s playing, using the same strategy he used last time but even more intense and worse. He’s literally trying to organize power on what used to be the really far fringes.
“He’s pushed QAnon accounts on his other platforms more than 500 times in the past year. That’s exponential increase since 2020 by him,” Carusone added, referring to those who believe bizarre conspiracy theories about Democrats and the US government. “That’s not an accident. He’s doing it on purpose. He’s literally organizing power in what is considered a militarized movement.
“This cauldron of extremism like the last topic that we have seen swirling and that heat ratcheting up, he’s helping raise the temperature,” Carusone said, as part of an on-camera panel discussion on MSNBC. “What CNN does is not only give him the ability to do that without any checks on top of it, but worse, they may be playing a big part in helping validate those things. A lot of times when these town halls are being done, the campaign gets to fill a large portion of the seats.
“They haven’t gone and said, ‘Hey, don’t worry, we’re not using the same tricks we have in the past. We’re not letting the campaign fill a single seat,’” Carusone noted. “… What’s going to happen afterwards when Trump gets to announce he went into the belly of the beast and the CNN audience was applauding for him?”
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