Trump to appear at CNN town hall in New Hampshire

[Citysnaps]

I can understand Trump being one of the most hated men in America, but the world? I wouldn’t call Trump someone I like, but I think there are definitely far worse people in the world.

I meant country.

 

[AG_PhamD]

To put it mildly: these are bullshit straw men arguments and not reflective of reality.

First, you present a false choice. The choice is not fail to cover Trump at all or give him a klan rally as they chose to do. You can cover him as he is - as an existential threat to democracy who tried to overthrow the government in an attempted auto coup and has promised to purge the government if elected again. These are all things known before CNN’s Trump rally. If any candidate demands that the only way for them to appear on your network is to give them a softball game with naked cheerleaders and no news of their recent guilty verdicts allowed, you say no. That’s integrity.

You say that CNN had ratings problems and had perceived integrity problems so they decided in your own words to:



That’s antithetical to actual integrity and guess what? it lost them their ratings too. Far from being in the toilet before and raised by Trump’s appearance, CNN’s numbers are in free fall since the town hall. The link is an earlier post.

So basically everything you guys said is wrong. I won’t cover the rest of the wrongness because that would deserve its own thread, but none of what you said is true. Almost every journalist outside of CNN and a good number within it criticized the integrity of the decision making around the town hall - you yourself admitted they tried to trade integrity for ratings though you tried to phrase it differently. In the end they lost both.

I think the strawman would be equating Trump with the KKK, that’s totally hyperbolic. I don’t think Trump is remotely close to where he should be with inclusivity and too many times his narcissism has impeded him from adequately condemning hate groups that support him- that fact alone should disqualify him in public opinion. But he actually did explicitly disavow David Duke. The only person I’m aware of Donald Trump ever may have tried to have lynched was Mike Pence. (You have to admit, that was clever )

And whether we like it or not, Donald Trump is the leading R candidate with near identical polling to Biden. To this point he has not been convicted of any crimes involving the election- though that very well may change nor is he (yet) ineligible to run for office. If CNN didn’t host the town hall, you don’t think he has other ways of having a platform. It’s in the public interest whether you like it or not. It’s not like he’s some nobody they are platforming.

So if Trump god forbid is re-elected, I guess the media should never hold and interview with him, right? Or maybe you let him talk and challenge the ideas in real time and afterwords- which is exactly what CNN did.

I’m not sure your point re: integrity. Just because an organization lacks integrity doesn’t mean it’s always the case- though one could argue the town hall should have had a representative spectrum of voters rather than likely giving Trump whatever he wanted just to have him on.

You also have to remember the context of this too. This is right after Fox booted Tucker Carlson. Trump is also feuding with Fox right now because Murdoch is backing DeSantis. CNN likely wanted to try to pick up viewers- keep in mind a lot of Fox viewers are not hardcore republicans.

And initially they were successful- they had over 3m viewers- 3x their normal view ship these days in that time slot.

Just because ultimately airing Trump lead to backlash and potentially caused a drop in viewership doesn’t mean my speculation is wrong. Decisions are made all the time without properly predicting the degree of backlash. Many examples of that these days.

If Trump was on Fox instead, there possibly would have been very little pushback, at least in real time by Fox. Follow up analysis by other media might never be watched. Wouldn’t you rather have him on CNN who will actually hold him to account, even if his fans are cheering him on in the background.

 

[Citysnaps]

First, you present a false choice. The choice is not fail to cover Trump at all or give him a klan rally as they chose to do. You can cover him as he is - as an existential threat to democracy who tried to overthrow the government in an attempted auto coup and has promised to purge the government if elected again. These are all things known before CNN’s Trump rally. If any candidate demands that the only way for them to appear on your network is to give them a softball game with naked cheerleaders and no news of their recent guilty verdicts allowed, you say no. That’s integrity.

You say that CNN had ratings problems and had perceived integrity problems so they decided in your own words to:

Perhaps a false choice for you. I didn't watch the event, so I can't speak to the manner in which he was questioned, but have heard summaries. In the end though, it's CNNs choice. Regarding the audience, it's tradition that the person being interviewed (no matter their political party, dem or repub) gets to choose his/her own audience. I would hate to see that regulated by the government or some group of people who may not be happy with that tradition and insist on an exception in certain cases. Perhaps you'd be happy with trump supporters getting to choose Biden's studio audience? And even have a say in the questions that'll be posed?

Not knowing anything about the subject, I never said anything about CNN having ratings problems as you assert above.

In the end we'll have to agree to disagree.

 

[Yoused]

And He's Fired!

Chris Licht out at CNN after tumultuous run as CEO

 

[GermanSuplex]

When are people going to learn Trump is toxic? To be fair, I think the interviewer did a good job, her history aside. She asked questions, she challenged him, she called him out.

The problem is, he’s not a normal candidate. It wasn’t a real town hall. Even these softball town halls with friendly audiences can be informative when the candidates are normal. Trump is not normal. He’s not tethered to reality. He’s dumb and will change the subject, brag and speak over whoever is interviewing him. He should have been in true neutral audience, or a mixed audience of dems, republicans and independents, and he should have been played audio and video clips of himself and others.

 

[dada_dave]

Fox News is receiving plaudits for their 1-on-1 Trump interview with Bret Baier - with specific mention of how badly the town hall CNN screwed it up relative to Fox. Yes you heard that right.

 

[Alli]

And now I understand MSNBC is planning on giving him a town hall too? WTF?!

 

[Roller]

And now I understand MSNBC is planning on giving him a town hall too? WTF?!

I'd be OK with that as long as a chyron pointing out his lies ran continuously at the bottom of the screen.

 

[fooferdoggie]

And now I understand MSNBC is planning on giving him a town hall too? WTF?!

whats the point just play anything from his rally he is a one trick pony nothing new.

 

[dada_dave]

MSNBC when given the opportunity did in fact shit the bed as well

Above is sarcasm. Why journalists are so bad at this (and this time it was even pre-taped) … of course that’s giving them the benefit of the doubt that is incompetence.