The reviews are in, and no one loved former President Donald Trump’s town hall with CNN more than Fox News. Host Laura Ingraham declared confidently that “moderator Kaitlan Collins and the C-suite gang at CNN” were “totally out of their league” as Trump steamrolled through Collins’ rehearsed fact checks. In fact, Trump supporters and advisers alike absolutely loved CNN’s town hall with the former president.
Outside the MAGA bubble, others are examining the wreckage.
Some are trying to blame CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, who moderated the event. There were some glaring Trump lies that she didn’t correct. But on the whole, it’s impossible to deny that she tried to some degree, and that it wasn’t close to enough. Her colleague Jake Tapper gamely tried to clean up immediately after the event, before admitting that there wasn’t enough time in the night to fact-check every false statement Trump made. The format forced Collins to try to interrupt Trump with various fact checks, which only turned him and the audience more against her as the night went on. It culminated with Trump calling Collins “a nasty person” — to big applause from the audience.
It’s no coincidence that Fox News and conservatives loved this event.
In a statement, a CNN spokesperson defended Collins as “a world-class journalist” who “asked tough, fair and revealing questions … and fact-checked President Trump in real time.” Yet primary fault for the disaster lies not with Collins, but with basic errors CNN made well before the town hall aired — decisions that guaranteed to push things beyond a breaking point. It’s no coincidence that Fox News and conservatives loved this event: It was, literally, classic Republican propaganda that Fox News co-founder Roger Ailes, who died in 2017, likely would have applauded.
First, when producing a live event with Trump, a man with a very long history in the entertainment business, you have to ask whether it is built to entertain or…
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