On some level, I don’t think there’s a ton you can really say about the Donald Trump town hall that CNN staged last week.
Conducting high-profile interviews with major presidential candidates is clearly a legitimate undertaking for television networks. Stocking the room with GOP primary voters turned it into a WrestleMania-style affair that made Trump look good, but this is a pretty standard way to organize a town hall — CNN did plenty with Democrats in the 2020 cycle that had the same structure. Did Kaitlan Collins do a perfect job of moderating? No, but I don’t think putting someone else up there would have substantially changed the result. Could CNN have made liberals happier by providing more fact-check chyrons and other bells and whistles to clarify that Trump is a huge liar? Yes, I think so. But would that have made a meaningful difference to his presidential prospects? I doubt it. Everyone who is open to voting for Trump is aware that people in the mainstream media believe he i…
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