On the menu today: Tonight, one of the first dramatic moments of the 2024 presidential campaign arrives, when Donald Trump appears on a network he’s long castigated, CNN, for a live town-hall event. The pressure is on moderator Kaitlan Collins to hit the former president with tough questions — while quite a few liberals argue that CNN shouldn’t be doing a town-hall event with Trump at all.
CNN vs. Trump, Tonight
Tonight, CNN will host a town hall with former president Donald Trump, the day after a Manhattan jury found him liable for battery and defamation of E. Jean Carroll. The jury found that Trump most likely sexually assaulted Carroll, but rejected the allegation that he raped her, and ordered him to pay her $5 million in combined damages.
The verdict ratchets up the pressure on CNN and moderator Kaitlan Collins to come out with hard questions for Trump and challenging follow-ups. The rest of the media was already grumbling that after several years of CNN contributors and commentators calling Trump a threat to democracy, the network is ready to roll out the red carpet for him like it’s autumn 2015 again.
Chris Licht, who became of chairman and CEO of CNN in May 2022, has pledged that the network will not allow contributors or guests to make false statements. “The analogy I love to use is some people like rain, some people don’t like rain. We should give space to that. But we will not have someone who comes on and says it’s not raining,” he said in an October interview with CNBC.
Under Licht’s standard, if Trump says something false, like yesterday’s claim on Truth Social that in the Carroll suit he was “not allowed to speak or defend myself” — then on paper, it’s on Collins to say something like, “No, that is not true. Your lawyers declined the opportunity for you to testify, and the judge even extended the deadline for you to change your mind.”
We all know how Trump likes being challenged and corrected, so tonight’s town hall could turn into something akin to his first debate with Biden in 2020 — lots of crosstalk, interruptions, and maybe even shouting or heated exchanges.
Even before the verdict, lots of other voices in mainstream media weighed in on what CNN ought to do, which you are free to interpret as “working the refs” before the game starts.
David Bauder of the Associated Press:
Donald Trump’s town hall forum on CNN on Wednesday is the first major television event of the 2024 presidential campaign — and a gigantic test for the chosen moderator, Kaitlan Collins. Both sides of the political divide expressed suspicion when the CNN forum at New Hampshire’s St. Anselm College was announced last week. Some Democrats question whether the former president should be given the airtime, while Republicans wonder if a network Trump has long disparaged can be fair.
David Folkenfik of NPR warned:
The announcement of CNN’s town hall with Trump engendered a backlash from both liberals and journalists who question the wisdom of putting Trump on the air live. During Trump’s drive to the White House in 2015 and 2016, the press failed repeatedly to cover him adequately. His rapid-fire bombast and glibness with false claims and outright lies overwhelmed reporters’ ability to process the implications of what he was saying in real time.
CNN just has to accept that criticism of the town hall is part of the price of doing business.
For years, a lot of contributors to the CNN network and website denounced Trump as an unparalleled menace, a threat to the Constitution, and the root of all evil and problems in American society. It’s a little weird to denounce somebody so furiously and then turn around and host a town hall for him like he’s just another “normal” candidate. Perhaps Licht or one of the on-air anchors ought to come out and say, “Yes, lots of our staff have strong feelings about him, but our job is to cover the presidential race, and love him or hate him, he’s a major candidate, so we’re going to give him the same town-hall opportunity that we give to every other major candidate.” Licht’s boss, David Zaslav, the CEO of CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, told CNBC last week, “He’s the frontrunner. He has to be on our network. . . . We are a divided government. We need to hear both voices. That’s what you see. Republicans are on the air on CNN, Democrats are on the air. All voices should be heard.”
There’s a counterargument that it is self-evident that Trump isn’t like every other major candidate, and thus networks and news divisions are being dishonest with themselves and their viewers when they publicly claim that he is.
Perry Bacon, over at the Washington Post:
CNN should, of course, treat Trump differently from other candidates. His record of antidemocratic behavior makes him a much more dangerous potential president than other candidates. Also, does anyone honestly think that CNN’s internal preparations for its town hall with Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, who has flirted with a presidential run, were nearly as extensive as for this one with Trump? I’m quite confident CNN approaches its coverage of Trump differently than for other politicians, no matter what the network claims publicly.
For those wondering about how that New York jury could reach a decision that Trump had committed sexual assault but not rape, keep in mind that under New York state law, there are multiple degrees of “sexual assault.” Today’s editorial lays out how Trump and his lawyers gave a particularly weak defense:
Because it was not a criminal case, Trump had the right not to attend. But in a civil trial, unlike a criminal one, if the defendant elects not to testify, the court instructs that a negative inference may be drawn. When allegations are serious, jurors naturally want a defendant to look them in the eye and offer a convincing denial. If a defendant fails to do that, it is common sense that a jury assumes he did not have a good explanation, or was not willing to submit whatever explanation he had to the crucible of cross-examination.
The only words of Trump’s that the jury heard were from his unimpressive performance in the deposition he was required to sit for pretrial, and his salacious braggadocio about sexual aggressiveness on the Access Hollywood recording. If leaving it at that was Trump’s strategic plan, it was a prescription for defeat. The jury not only found for Carroll; the panel of six men and three women, drawn from Manhattan, the Bronx, and Westchester County, also unanimously directed him to pay a combined $5 million in damages for the battery and defamation torts.
Do you see a pattern emerging?
Yesterday, the jury determined that Trump had defamed Carroll when he wrote in October on Truth Social that her claims were a “complete con job,” “a hoax,” and “a lie.”
Several Fox News hosts, most notably former host Lou Dobbs, led the network into a dire legal situation where it felt the best option was to pay a $787 million settlement to Dominion.
While she was facing her own lawsuit from Dominion, Sydney Powell’s own lawyers argued, “No reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact.”
An arbitration panel ordered Mike Lindell, a.k.a. “the My Pillow guy,” to pay $5 million for losing his own “Prove Mike Wrong” 2020 election challenge.
Infowars’ Alex Jones was ordered to pay $1.5 billion in damages to the families of children killed at Sandy Hook for defaming them and claiming the school shooting was a “false flag” and that the grieving families were “crisis actors” complicit in the plot.
And yesterday, CNN reported that congressman George Santos is facing some sort of imminent indictment: “FBI and the Justice Department public integrity prosecutors in New York and Washington have been examining allegations of false statements in Santos’ campaign finance filings and other claims.”
Some people who already like figures such as Trump, Dobbs, Powell, Lindell, Jones, and Santos, will look at these cases and say, “Ah-ha! Further evidence that the sinister deep state and biased judges and juries are trying to crack down on those who dare tell the truth!”
Hopefully, some others will notice that these self-proclaimed truth-tellers keep running into juries of ordinary Americans who find them guilty of defamation and lies.
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it yesterday, Republican voters like a governor who takes on Disney, and our president may be elderly, but apparently he eats like a child.