CNN boss Chris Licht told Trump to have fun before the town hall, and the Trump campaign wanted Kaitlin Collins to moderate because she has kept a relationship with Trump.
The Guardian reported in their behind the scenes look at the town hall:
Trump was not particularly concerned by whether the broadcast would get high ratings, though he told CNN’s chief executive, Chris Licht, backstage that he would boost their ratings, to which Licht nodded and said he should have “a good conversation and have fun”, two of the people said.
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Trump’s team also figured that CNN worked for its needs because it could have Collins as the moderator, a rising star who co-hosts the network’s morning show but has also remained on the Trump beat and has taken care to preserve her relationship with the ex-president.
Pairing Collins with Republicans who mostly voted for Trump in 2020 was as close to home turf as the campaign could get. The team said it would have rejected Jake Tapper, after he threatened to ban Republicans who endorsed Trump’s 2020 election lies from his shows.
As we suspected here at PoliticusUSA, Collins was picked for the gig because she is a conservative Trump friendly who worked in conservative media. The reason why she didn’t aggressively pushed back on Trump and only offered token objections is because that was the gameplan all along.
Trump negotiated how the town hall would go down. CNN played along a gave Trump everything that he asked for, because the goal was to boost ratings, which the town hall did for about an hour. By 10 PM ET, CNN was back in the basement of the cable news ratings.
CNN personalities like Anderson Cooper are trying to defend the town hall, and even blaming the American people for their outrage, but the behind the scenes reporting reveals that the fix was in. Trump got what he wanted out of the event. The former president used CNN to get injected back into mainstream media.
Trump got to choose his moderator, and he picked Kaitlin Collins, which explains everything about the town hall travesty.
It was all a scam, and CNN sold out America for about an hour of Tucker Carlson’s average ratings.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
