It seems to be an open question whether broadcasting his views alerts more people to the danger of electing him or attracts more adherents to the MAGA cause.
Rick Wilson calmly assesses the situation:
Events like the town hall just confirm voters’ hardened beliefs.
Karl Rove has an op-ed over at the Wall St. Journal today contrasting Trump’s purported firm stands on law and order with his support of Jan. 6 rioters, and condemning him for the latter. Naturally the commenters try to divert attention to violence at The Other Side’s rallies, or attack Rove as a RINO or worse.
When you’ve convinced yourself that Karl Rove is a progressive shill, you’re long past any hope of retrieval from the abyss.
I had no idea this was even happening and, reading just a smattering of comments, I’m glad I’ve been blissfully unaware, and hope to remain so for the rest of the election season. And, yeah, if he gets the nomination again, I’m prepared to believe he could win again. I have no idea why some/many people are acting like he’s unelectable this time around when we saw what happened last time around.
This is so much BS. Every time I see his name mentioned I cringe. Stop giving this mf press. Stop giving him a free platform. Effing CNN.
First of all, thank you to everyone who watched and reported. There is no way I could have done it.
I’m very surprised that the studio audience was all friendlies. I apologized if this was answered and I missed it but was this the actual plan? Was it advertised that way or ever addressed?
If she had just said “you’re a giant asshole, fuck off” after Trump called her a nasty person right to her face, she’d have instant folk hero status and there is no way in God’s earth her career would be over.
The whole thing was a disgusting farce.
According to The Hill, the audience was intended to be:
I mean, primary voters. Of course they were trumpists.
I’m willing to bet that Jean Carroll was on the phone to her lawyer first thing this morning asking him to file another defamation lawsuit for “wack job”.
…the agenda of Licht and the people that now own CNN should now be perfectly clear. They want Trump back.
The Dems are completely unprepared for the propaganda onslaught that is coming.
That seems clear. “We made a Lot of news” I naievely thought the job of a news station was to report news, not to MAKE news.
I suspect we’ll never see Trump in front of a non-biased audience ever again. Why would he ever agree to such a plan? He’s the most likely nominee for the Republicans, and doesn’t give a shit about the opinions of anyone who isn’t already a full-on Trumpist.
For him, every election appearance will be about firing up the Trumpists, and having non-Trumpists in his audience can only make that harder, and Trump doesn’t do “harder”.
So, you either give him the friendly audience, or you don’t get him on your show.
Hopefully for the sake of American democracy, everyone starts choosing that second option.
Biden to voters, regarding the town hall rally: “Do you want four more years of that?”
George Conway’s comment on the Biden tweet:
“I’m no media expert, but it seems to me that interviewing a narcissistic psychopath in front of a packed house of his flying monkeys is not the best format for television journalism.”
To George I’d say it had to be done as a reminder for those that already knew what a lying sack of shit he is and as an education to those who have lived in the liberal bubble and not actually seen the nastiness of him and his base live and in truly disgusting form.
I don’t like looking a pictures and videos of the holocaust either, but it serves as a reminder that evil is real.
An interesting point and hopefully it has merit. To those who did not watch any of it, just picture any low-life, bullshitting, opinionated bully in a room full of suck-ups (except for Kaitlan).
Fuckin’ a.
Exactly. It used to be a journalistic standard to report the news, not be part of it. I guess we can safely say CNN is no longer a journalism outlet. Just more infotainment for ratings.
Watching “John King Politics” on CNN this morning. King is analyzing the Trump town hall from last night, and it is not complimentary to Trump.
CNN chyron: “Trump repeats election lies, rewrites Jan 6 history in CNN town hall.”
Ah, this may shed some light on why CNN held a Trump town hall: King just mentioned that CNN is offering town halls to every credible candidate. So I guess we’ll see more such presentations as time progresses and candidates declare.