Which makes it a Trump Rally,
Correct.
As @Banquet_Bear has been pointing out, CNN under its right-wing leadership (Chris Licht etc.) is desperate to get Trump back into the White House—both for the ratings, and because CNN has a great shot at replacing Fox as the new State Television channel, given Trump’s prickly relationship with Fox lately (Tucker Carlson emails etc.).
So they are full speed ahead with GOP propaganda in general and adulation of Trump in particular.
This was the entire plan for the “town hall”.
CNN chose the audience: Trumpites who’d energize and encourage him. CNN chose a moderator who would be easy for Trump to patronize, then insult, then offer up to the crowd as an object of ridicule.
NONE of the questions to be asked of Trump mattered in any slight degree. They might just as well have asked him questions about his golf games.
THE POINT was to show Trump humiliating and “owning” the moderator—who whatever her actual right-leaning background, was easily shoehorned into the role of “liberal media faker.”
THE POINT was to make an hour long commercial showing Trump being “strong”---------------------------------------------as his fans define “strong,”
CNN’s choice to put this on was an act of breathtaking cynicism.
I did not watch, I see this “town hall” as giving prosecutors some lovely clips for the various trials.
Any excuse for what CNN pulled last night has to include one small element to possibly be effective: A magical spell that makes us all forget the period of time between 2016 campaign and now.
I see no evidence for “right-wing leadership” in Chris Licht or anyone else, and if CNN is engaged in “adulation of Trump” why have they been devoting so much time and space on their website to debunking Trump’s lies at the town hall?
I did find it disappointing that Licht defended CNN’s catastrophically bad handling of this event. But rather than making silly statements about CNN suddenly turning right-wing and being in the tank for Trump, it might be more reasonable to hear out Anderson Cooper, CNN’s most senior anchor, about why it was important to remind people who Trump really is and the danger that he poses. I think the event could have been handled much better, but Cooper makes an important point, and those are not the words of an anchor or a network that supports Trump.
Just another shitty MAGA rally. Did they open the show with “God bless the USA?”
Yeah, but it’s at the top of his head.
He’s a schmuck. His reasoning was that there are only two choices here:
do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away? If we all only listen to those we agree with, it may actually do the opposite. If lies are allowed to go unchecked, as imperfect as our ability to check them is on a stage in real time, those lies continue and those lies spread
as if there weren’t the third option of CNN putting a strong moderator out there, and putting him before a neutral audience, and other responsible safeguards.
I’m curious what moderator could do anything to reign in The Don? He’d still say the same things, and he can always walk out and deride it as a “liberal trap” or somesuch.
Maybe it’s a hijack, but I keep seeing people mention that “they know who he is since he’s been President.” Obviously we all pay attention to various goings on, but how true is that of the average person who perhaps watches FOX at night after work or discusses him with a few friends or co-workers? Most people don’t take a deep interest in politics (which is a shame to me IMHO).
Well, a stronger moderator, then.
He’s been interviewed by journalists who didn’t let him interrupt their questions, kept returning to the questions he didn’t answer, and in general gave him a somewhat hard time (not as hard as he deserves) pulling his schtick.
Of course, he wouldn’t have agreed to these terms, but that’s on him, not on CNN.
I agree with this part, and I previously said as much. Anderson Cooper was in the difficult position of defending CNN management, which was difficult because they had fucked up this event in a very major way. Nevertheless what he said was true – it was important to remind people (the sane members of the electorate, that is) about Trump’s ruthless mendacity. Collins did push back on Trump, but lacked the assertiveness to do so effectively. CNN has been ceaselessly itemizing Trump’s lies ever since that fiasco ended on Wednesday night, and Cooper underscored that point once again.
Cooper’s statement certainly strongly refutes any notion that CNN was turning into some sort of right-wing propaganda outlet that “adulates Trump”. Which is the main point I was making. Now, if Anderson Cooper is suddenly fired, I may have to rethink that position. Do you think that will happen?
But not the part about Cooper being a schmuck? Okay.
Now I’m curious about the hypothetical journalist strong enough to be effective holding Trump’s feet to the fire. Who would be effective at this task? Jonathan Swan did a fine job, as I recall. Medhi Hasan would also be good. Who else?
CNN isn’t lacking for heavyweights of their own. Jim Acosta, Jake Tapper, or Anderson Cooper himself. Tapper was especially furious about how the event had been handled (and Cooper supported his outrage). I never had any strong impression one way or the other when I saw Kaitlan Collins as a reporter on White House assignment, but as a moderator she totally allowed Trump to take control of the proceedings.
There should not only have been a much more aggressive moderator, but they should have been equipped with a kill switch on Trump’s microphone. Because you can’t moderate someone who won’t shut up. If Trump refuses to show up under those conditions, fine – run a documentary itemizing all his previous lies instead. That’s called “journalism” – the pursuit of truth.
Yeah, I don’t watch CNN, and now I’m never going to.
No reason. MSNBC drives me nuts sometime, so it’s not as if CNN is clearly inferior, though now they’ve made a strong case for being much, much worse. This episode was an unforced fustercluck of the first order.
CNN isn’t evil, they’re just an example of another predominantly American phenomenon – profit-oriented commercial broadcasting, with all the attendant bias which that implies, especially the bias to ratings.
Well, you could allow the moderator to cut off his mic, to prevent him speaking over the mod. Or eject audience members who laugh or otherwise react audibly. Folk ARE capable of restraining themselves, even if they may not PREFER to.
It is sad that participants and audience members cannot be expected to adhere to certain rules of decorum for certain forums. But heck, even SCt justices feel it appropriate to shot out “Liar” to the President…
This. I watched enough of it (maybe 10 minutes total) and as long as Trump wasn’t physically prevented from being heard, he would just constantly blast out a barrage of noise and BS.
I wonder if Collins was contractually obligated to only call him “President trump”?
There is literally nothing any moderator could do to reign in Trump; he doesn’t care about rules, or decorum, or courtesy, or even coherency; he’s not going to answer the question he was asked no matter how many times he is asked, pressured, or forcefully redirected; he isn’t interested in appeals to logic, reason, or civility; and you’re not going to ‘catch him out’ in a flagrant lie because he literally doesn’t see any merit in integrity or consistency. The idea that any degree of moderation short of playing him off with an air horn would have any restraint upon his marginally coherent “Gish gallop” through lies, insinuations, insults, conspiranoia, and appeals to bigotry and hatred is so laughably inconsistent with all prior experience that one might as well expect polished rhetoric and reasoned debate from a hyena. You’re nor going to ‘expose’ anything new because Trump has already had almost eight years of free media publicity which has shown the nation who he is, and frankly there are plenty of people who like and want an incompetent would-be demagogue who says the kinds of things they are thinking but lack the candor to say themselves.
All this ‘town hall’ (such a misleading pseudo-aphorism for unchecked publicity) with was give Trump a quasi-legitimate mainstream platform from which to spew hateful mostly-gibberish and rile up his base over baseless election fraud claims without any real restraint. And the defense—such as it is—that this need be done to show the ‘fair treatment’ that the non-conservative media will provide to Trump (a man who has never cared one whit for integrity, propriety, or legitimacy) is patently absurd. This event didn’t reveal anything that anyone didn’t already know about Trump’s character or competency, or cause anyone to change their mind about him.
Anderson Cooper was in the “difficult position” of keeping his multi-million-dollar-per-annum meal ticket alive while riding some hypothetical line of objective-looking criticism and validation of his employer. Somehow Cooper has gotten this reputation as a deep journalism even though he functions mostly as a celebrity newsreader who is attractive and well-spoken but is about as deep as the shallow end of a kiddy pool. And if you want to remind people about Trump’s “ruthless mendacity” the best way to do it is to cover what he says and does on his own, not give him an ostensibly credible platform from which to reach out to more people.
Precisely; it’s not about political leanings or appeals to being even-handed; Biden has just been ditch-water dull as President because he has mostly just done his job without flair or much controversy (at least, over the issues that viewers can stay energized and outraged over, because few Americans can sustain any lasting outrage over erroneous drone-bombing of an innocent Afghan family or secret wars in African countries that few could even pick off of a map), and he hasn’t even had the decency to whack a swamp rabbit with a paddle or do Chevy Chase-esque pratfalls more than once every couple of months. He’s a terrible, terrible President for generating news cycles, and CNN would much prefer a reliable harlequin and montebank like Trump who is guaranteed to generate enough outrage on an almost daily basis to keep a dozen panels full of know-nothing pundits employed. Which, unfortunately, plays right into the hands of a short-fingered vulgarian who isn’t interested in discussing real issues and has no actual policies or clear positions to defend, but instead just spews a continuous stream of insults and outrageous lies at a rate too fast to debunk or correct.
Stranger
Doubt it, its called common courtesy and professionalism (both of which Trump lacks). Like it or not he was President and the proper way to refer to a former president is to call him by his title. She didn’t sink to his level, not her place, although she could have been better when he called her nastey.
She did call out his lies, but not constantly because it would have been nothing but calling him out as a liar all night. If she (and CNN) were contractually obligated to do anything it was to not do that. He was invited to do a certain format; they didn’t want him walking off stage. They wanted to document the whole shitshow so they could break it down and use clips of it between now and the election. Again, the biggest part of the shitshow was the audience, what a bunch of good little Nazis
Kaitlin was terrible but also I feel sorry for her. It was a pretty tough situation for any interviewer with a hostile crowd and no way of controlling the situation.
And has she even interviewed anyone in a format like this before? I thought she was a white house correspondent, then she’s presented one or two things where it’s a friendly chat around a table, but I don’t think I’ve seen her do a 1 on 1 interview.
I also agree with the posters above who consider this part of CNN’s tack to the right.