This . . . Is CNN??

When I heard that CNN was hosting Donald Trump in a live "town hall" event to meet with voters in New Hampshire, I was skeptical bordering on uneasy.  This town hall, as it was promoted, would give Trump oxygen at a time when he's already getting too much of it.   But he was supposedly entitled to such a format, given that he is the front runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and credible presidential candidates - at least credible presidential candidates not named Martin by their mothers and O'Malley by their fathers - are taken seriously be CNN.  And Kaitlan Collins, who got banned from covering Trump by his administration after she asked Trump uncomfortable questions about Vladimir Putin and Michael Cohen at a 2018 White House press conference, was tapped to host the event and was seen as someone who would grill him like a steak n a barbecue.

Instead, she folded like a bridge table. 

Despite looking resplendent in a white suit signifying the struggle for women's equality, Collins let Trump walk and run roughshod all over her as he:

• advocated for a debt default in the event that Republicans don't get the massive spending cuts they want 
• mocked Elizabeth Jean Carroll by seeing she played "hanky panky" in dressing rooms and once again insisted that he has never met Carroll, who just won a civil suit against him for accusing him of rape, despite that photo from the late 1980s shows Trump and Carroll in great proximity to each other while talking to their spouses  
• said it didn't matter whether Ukraine or Russia won the war between the two countries as long as the fighting ends
• said he would pardon many convicted January 6 insurrectionists, saying there was "love in their hearts"
• continued to insist that the 2020 election was stolen
• refused to answer questions abut a possible federal ban on abortion while taking credit for the repeal of Roe v. Wade by appointing three Supreme Court justices
• ridiculed his critics, including Carroll, whom he called a "wack job" 

Instead of exposing Trump for what he is, CNN simply allowed him to tighten his already-firm group on the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and the heavy promotion of the event drew more eyeballs to the cable channel than you would expect for a political TV broadcast in the middle of May.  Which, of course, translated into big ratings and lots of ad revenue for the channel.

Chris Licht, the CNN boss who is attempting to make CNN less anti-Republican and more neutral, praised Collins for hosting the event and fact-checking Trump in real time, even though her efforts satisfied no one.  She may be in line for a prime-time anchoring slot.  So rather than get a reprimand for her ineffectiveness, she may get . . . a promotion.

And I put this woman on my beautiful-women picture blog?  

I must say, though, she does look good in white . . . which of course is the color of surrender.

Licht can frame this as an example of how the town hall cast light on Trump's despicable behavior, but the event was designed mostly to attract people who are quite pleased with Trump's behavior - i.e., his supporters.  The participants of this "town hall" were mostly MAGA Republicans who were chosen specifically to have Trump's back.  Some reports said that CNN actually coaxed the audience members to cheer Trump's idiotic and hurtful statements to pump some life into the event, but, quite frankly they didn't need any coaxing.  And for every person watching on TV who was appalled by Trump, there was someone else - maybe two people - who were cheering him on.  

Chris Licht is crowing about how his channel made news with this event, but that should not have been, and likely was, the objective.  The objective is to report news.  If CNN wanted to give Trump a platform in which to state his case for being returned to the Presidency, it likely could have found a way to do so without having a live broadcast and without an audience who acted like they had just been warmed up by someone like the late Jerry Springer.  Give Trump a live feed and a room full of sycophants and I doubt that even the late Eric Sevareid couldn't have controlled him.  

This broadcast was a disgrace and an abomination.  Ironically, it may have helped President Biden by destroying the very thing Trump supposedly had that got him this moment in the spotlight in the first place.

Credibility.