Trump’s CNN town hall on Wednesday night was an endless parade of lies and moral obscenities.
He repeatedly insisted that he won the 2020 election (false), viciously mocked a woman who he had just been found liable for sexually assaulting (obscene), claimed he completed building the US-Mexico border wall (false), and committed to pardoning “many” of the January 6 rioters convicted on federal offenses (obscene).
He steamrolled over moderator Kaitlan Collins’s attempts to fact-check and challenge him; an overwhelmingly friendly audience laughing at all of his worst moments ensured that he got away with it.
The majority of American center-left punditariat — myself included — almost immediately concluded that CNN made a predictably disastrous mistake putting Trump on the air live in front of a friendly audience. A few others said that Trump actually did himself no favors — that rolling out the greatest Trump hits mostly reminded moderate voters why they’ve repeatedly rejected the man.
These takes are not mutually exclusive: It can be harmful to create a platform for the dissemination of lies even if said lies don’t resonate with the most electorally important audience.
But more fundamentally, I’ve come to think that we in the media have mostly been having the wrong conversation. We’re so (understandably) preoccupied with the wisdom of CNN’s decision that we are missing what the town hall actually showed us about America and what’s coming for the country in 2024.
And what it showed us is this: Donald Trump retains all of the dark charisma and authoritarian preoccupations that have fueled him for nearly a decade at the forefront of American public life. The studio audience ate it up — much as millions of Republicans continue to do around the country. There is a reason why Trump’s primary poll numbers are high and getting higher: This is what a large portion of the country wants out of their politics.
I understand being angry with…
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