Sounds like the Trump we all saw for four awful years.We should remember that Trump regularly refers to CNN as “fake news,” and has trained his cult to see all media that is critical of him as the “enemy of the people.” As a result, CNN had to evacuate its NYC headquarters in 2018 due to a bomb threat. The next year, Cesar Sayoc, who sent functional pipe bombs to Trump’s critics, including CNN, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
In turn, CNN decided to reward Trump for his reckless and dangerous behavior by giving him a 70-minute Festivus to air his grievances and lies in front of a fawning cult of 400 sycophants in New Hampshire, which reflected the full spectrum of whiteness and cruelty.
[...]
When CNN anchor and moderator Kaitlin Collins attempted to interject with actual facts, Trump simply doubled down on his bullshit and gave red meat in the form of rage, lies, and conspiracies, which the audience and his MAGA base heartily ate up. An hour into the circus, Trump called Collins a “nasty person”—simply because she stood her ground and asked follow-up questions.
Daily Beast
To make matters worse, a day after Donald Trump was held liable by a jury of his peers for sexual battery and defamation against journalist E. Jean Carroll, CNN’s new leadership deemed it wise to let the twice-impeached vulgarian mock Carroll. [...] Trump bragged that his poll numbers went up after the verdict. The audience, which allegedly included “independents,” laughed and clapped.
[...]
In defense of the Dobbs case, Trump took full credit for the Supreme Court decision and boasted he did more for the “pro-life” movement than any other president in the past 50 years. He repeated the hateful and dangerous lie that, pre-Dobbs, babies were being killed after birth. He said this three times, and Collins failed to correct him each time.
[...]
Trump spent the entirety of the Town Hall repeating his Big Lie and election fraud conspiracies.
[...]
He also managed to lionize Ashli Babbit, who was shot and killed by a Capitol Hill police officer as she was trying to illegally enter the building. Trump praised her and called the officer, who happens to be Black, a “thug.” Trump then made a both-sides equivalence between the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and BLM protesters, who were overwhelmingly peaceful and simply demanded that police officers refrain from shooting and killing innocent Black people. Trump’s comment went unchallenged.
CNN has been trying to compete with Fox for some time now. Sounds like they've made it.
The Town Hall was, however, an important reminder of the Upside Down where the entire conservative movement now currently resides. In this perverse and deplorable Earth-3, the election was “rigged” against Trump, Nancy Pelosi was to blame for the failure of law enforcement to stop the violent insurrections, and Trump “completed” his wall, which, of course, was never completed. [...] When asked if Trump still wants to terminate the Constitution, he said he wouldn’t—even though he recently posted he would on Truth Social.
Anyone who hadn't already figured how this would turn out should not be running a company. Kaitlin Collins should have read Mehdi Hasan's new book, "Win Every Argument", or at least listened to one of the many interviews he gave about it.What was gained from giving Trump a 70-minute platform to spew lies and bullshit? How did this help inform Americans about the truth? How did it help defend democracy? How did it help CNN gain right-wing viewers, especially as their own anchor was humiliated and mocked by Trump in front of 400 Trump supporters?
[...]
Hopefully the money and ratings were worth the masochism and self-immolation.
[...]
When he was asked about Jan. 6, Trump called the Capitol Police officer who fatally shot Ashli Babbitt “a thug.” He said he would pardon “a large portion” of the Jan. 6 rioters, blamed the attack on Nancy Pelosi—“Crazy Nancy, as I affectionately call her”—and refused to apologize to his former vice president for endangering his life. Instead, Trump said Mike Pence “should’ve put the votes back to the state legislatures.”
When Trump was asked about a jury on Tuesday finding him liable for sexual battery and defamation—to the tune of $5 million—Trump repeated many of the same misogynist tropes he based his failed defense on. He called his accuser, E. Jean Carroll, a “wackjob,” and he repeated his claims that, “unfortunately or fortunately,” celebrities get away with sexual assault. His mention of “hanky-panky in a dressing room” elicited hysterical laughter from the adulating audience.
When he was asked about the debt ceiling, Trump openly rooted for economic pain—and suggested that pain was politically the right thing to do.
[...]
When Collins called Trump out for saying the debt ceiling shouldn’t be used as “a negotiating wedge,” he acknowledged that he said that when he was president, but followed it up by saying, with a shrug, he could change his tune now “because now I’m not president.”
The crowd, once again, laughed and applauded.
[...]
Throughout the 70-minute town hall, Trump refused to accept reality. When Collins tried to fact-check him, Trump just spoke over her and repeated his falsehoods.
[...]
Collins repeatedly tried to rectify the record, but Trump just kept forging ahead. When he said the “government cameras” showed “people going to 28 different voting booths”—something that never happened—Collins tried to correct him to no avail.
Halfway through the town hall, CNN staffers were acknowledging the event was a disaster for the truth.
“This is so bad,” one of CNN’s on-air personalities told The Daily Beast before the first commercial break. "I was cautiously optimistic despite the criticism... it is awful. It’s a Trump infomercial. We’re going to get crushed.”
Which Hasan warns as "the Gish Gallop," and specifically naming Trump as one of the world's top gallopers.Trump’s game plan seemed to be a familiar one: spew so many lies that fact-checking him would be impossible. Before Collins could correct him on one lie, he was talking over her and telling another.
Which is exactly what he said in 2020. It was a stupid question.To end the night, Collins asked Trump if he would commit to supporting the results of the 2024 election.
“If it’s an honest election, correct, I will,” Trump said, in less than definitive fashion
Cleanup on aisle 3.CNN later released a statement in support of Collins: “Tonight Kaitlan Collins exemplified what it means to be a world-class journalist. She asked tough, fair and revealing questions. And she followed up and fact-checked President Trump in real time to arm voters with crucial information about his positions as he enters the 2024 election as the Republican frontrunner. That is CNN’s role and responsibility: to get answers and hold the powerful to account.”
If you didn't watch, and you want to see highlight (I guess that should be lowlight) clips, Aaron Rupar has it for you.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 11:43 am: Putting the best spin on it they can...
UPDATE 09:31 pm:
I'll tell you what I think, Coop. I think you're a talented, honest, and honorable journalist, and you should use your talents somewhere else.
UPDATE 05/12/2023:
But it did for CNN exactly what they were going for.
I'm sure the CNN executives would disagree with that. It's exactly what Trump was saying: he is the one who gets ratings. And CNN needed ratings. But did they have to fill the audience with MAGA heads? That was a choice. Perhaps that was part of the deal they mde with Trump to get him on.More than 3 million people watched Wednesday night’s town hall, early data from Nielsen Media Research showed, representing a more than 300 percent increase from a typical weeknight at 8 p.m. for a network consistently running behind Fox News and MSNBC.
[...]
“I’m not sure we made enough news to counterbalance just giving Trump a perch to lie from with a laugh track,” another employee at the network said.
The Hill
Actually, what CNN aired was, in fact, a MAGA rally.David Zaslav, the media mogul who runs the network’s new parent company [...] last week defended the company’s decision to host a town hall with Trump, saying “we need to hear both voices,” and noting the company’s investors are looking forward to a “great political season coming.”
[...]
CNN on Thursday clarified it had curated the audience through community, student politics and government, faith groups, as well as agriculture and education organizations. The school and campaign also invited guests, the network said.
[...]
“It felt like we got some of these people from a MAGA rally,” the on-air talent said.
And Trump still punished them for it. He owned them.
Hoping some day his father will love him.“That was President Donald J. Trump ripping us a new a—— here on CNN’s live presidential town hall,” anchor Anderson Cooper says on the manipulated video, which was posted to Trump’s Truth Social account Friday morning. “Thank you for watching, have a good night.”
The fake video had first been posted on Twitter by Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, who often uses social media to mock liberals and media figures critical of his father and other conservatives.
The Hill
UPDATE 05/17/2023:
The man is a defense lawyer's worst nightmare. Well, he's the country's worst nightmare.When asked why he took government documents from the White House, Trump answered: “I was there and I took what I took . . . . I had every right to do it. I didn’t make a secret of it. You know, the boxes were stationed outside of the White House.”
With those fateful words, Trump admitted that he was involved in willfully removing the documents from the White House. It is a federal crime to “willfully and unlawfully … remove … any … document … in any public office … of the United States.” Indeed, the Justice Department has identified “improper removal,” or “unlawful” removal, as a key concern in court filings in the Mar-a-Lago litigation.
Before making that admission, Trump might have blamed the removal on his aides. Indeed, his lawyers had recently done just that. In a letter they sent to the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee last month, they claimed the removal of the documents marked as classified was a result of staff error and inadvertence.
But that no longer holds. Trump’s own statement directly implicates him in the deliberate removal of the documents at issue.
It also discards another potential defense. If the documents were taken to Trump’s “southern White House” at Mar-a-Lago months before Trump’s presidency ended and were simply not returned, Trump could argue they were never unlawfully “removed” from a government office; they just “stayed there.” Trump appears to have tossed that argument overboard too.
Suppose, however, that Trump was still president when the documents landed in Mar-a-Lago in the few hours remaining while that resort was still the “southern White House.” He might claim the documents simply remained in that “federal office” and were never “removed.”
[...]
The Sixth Amendment requires that trials occur in the federal “district wherein the crime shall have been committed.” Trump’s admission of his personal role in removing the documents while he was in Washington means that Special Counsel Smith is now on surer footing than ever in bringing the documents case in DC, rather than in Florida.
[...]
Another point as to venue is easily overlooked: an indictment for conspiracy. One potential charge Smith could bring is conspiracy to defraud the United States of its property or lawful functions – functions like maintaining national security documents in secure locations. That charge, of course, depends on Smith’s proof of an agreement between Trump and another person to remove the documents.
Conspiracy charges carry a potential five-year sentence, two years longer than the maximum prison term for unlawful removal of government property.
[...]
Finally, there’s the grave Espionage Act charge of failing to deliver unlawfully possessed defense-related materials to the government. Because the unlawful retention occurred in Florida, whether Smith can try that case in DC will also depend on what other evidence he has, including mailings to Washington. If such evidence is available, Trump’s admission can help Smith show that the unlawful acts in Florida were part of a continuing offense that began in DC.
Just Security
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